UNDER PRESSURE THE PLANS TO SHARE OUR PATIENT DATA HAVE NOW BEEN DELAYED TO 1ST SEPTEMBER BUT STILL BEST TO ACT
If you live in England, all your encounters with your GP – information about your physical, mental and sexual health and other sensitive information such as criminal records and abuse are being put into a huge database which can be shared with ‘third parties’, including private companies!
This is being done without patient consent by NHS Digital, who runs the health service IT system, under instruction from Secretary of State, Matt Hancock.
This new data system (General Practice Data for Planning and Research system (GPDPR) comes in to effect on 1st July 2021, so there is only a short time to spread the word.
Campaign groups for digital rights such as ‘Foxglove’ have started legal action. Rose Curling, Solicitor from ‘Foxglove’, in a legal letter sent to the Department of Health & Social Care, said they had “serious concerns” about the legality of the move because no explicit consent had been given and “very few members of the public will be aware that the new processing is imminent, directly affecting their personal medical data”. Further legal action is being prepared in conjunction with ‘Just Treatment’
NHS Digital denies that our data will be sold off and claim private companies will only be able to request access for research purposes, but they have been pretty silent on who will have access.
After the Government give away of billions of pounds in Covid contracts to their cronies, why should we trust them not to do the same with this very lucrative ‘lake of data’ estimated to be worth £10 billion a year!!
‘Foxglove’ are also concerned the data could be shared with US tech giants including Amazon, Google, Microsoft, plus UK artificial intelligence group Faculty and US data analytics firm Palantir Technologies.
We can do something about this and opt out by filling in this form and taking it to our GP’s before the deadline of 23rd June. After this date our historical records become a permanent and irreversible part of the new data system. Patients who opt out after the deadline can only stop any future data from being funnelled into the new system.
SOME IMPORTANT LINKS:
How to opt out – it’s easy and doesn’t affect your care
an excellent video explaining how the data store works and why ‘Foxglove’ is taking legal action.
And if you are still not sure what to do, it’s well worth reading this detailed explanation from Caroline Molloy of ‘Open Democracy’.
