[ Date Index ] [ Thread Index ] [ <= Previous by date / thread ] [ Next by date / thread => ]
On Sat, 20 Mar 2010, Simon Robert wrote:
I don't know what you do for a living and I can't see
I'll leave that for Adrian to answer...
well with the current paper records there are no encryption measures in force, apart from doctors hand writing. I don't see quite what the problem is with this stuff being available to NHS practitioners.
Doctors surgerys are relatively secure - in my experience of them anyway. That's not something I'm concerned about - for now.
I agree that these minimal records may not solve many of the issues of patient info that is needed by the NHS. It would be no problem to me if much more was included, but this is a start. These issues are the sort of thing IT is supposed to solve.
IT was supposed to create the "paperless office". Computers were supposed to make our lives easier.Neither of these have happened. I have more paperwork now than I had 20 years ago and computers, if anything have just complicated matters...
So to have it blocked because people are worried about some sort of privacy issue is depressing to be honest.
Every day something or someone is eroding our "privacy" and every day we heard about lapses of security leaving to our privacy - laptops left on trains, being stolen, usb keys going missing, etc.
What are the objections to having this info on a national database? I really don't understand, which is my problem. But if someone could lay it out to me in a couple of sentences I'd be grateful.
There was an old episode of Eastenders where the villain of the time broke into the local doctors and read some medical notes that had been left out - I forget the exact plot - anyway the villain got medical information that gave him enough information to blackmail a character over an abortion (or was it someone who had HIV - maybe both - I think this was 20 years ago!)
Now, I'd like to think that Doctors surgerys have a higher degree of physical security these days, but now fast-forward to today and we have a national database with access from almost anywhere - how much easier does it get? Bored hospital worker 'browsing', villains looking for blackmail opportunities, or worse, altering data.
Or maybe a form of industrial espionage by the insurance companies - Oh look Mr Anderson, your family has a history of X, we're upping your premiums... Or maybe not even espionage, but simply asking for the data...
And then what happens in the future - all data in one place - available to the highest bidder? Or for a fixed fee... It's already happened with the DVLA, anyone can buy your name and address from them, given a car number plate, (e.g. private parking companies), and now anyone can see if any car is insured online via the interweb - for free, MOTs too, and that's not even a police database... Everything we do will eventually be catalogued, logged, stored, indexed, stamped, filed and turned into numbers and we will have no privacy. I just hope it's not in my lifetime.
Oh - and if you're woried that you'll one day be lying on a gurney after some accident and there's some vital bit of medical history that'll result in your untimely demise if the surgeon doesn't know it... Well, wear a medi-alert bracelet of some sort if it's that bad.
Gordon -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html