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Herself has taken exception to this plan and says she's going to opt out.
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We are opting out.
You can rely on the NHS to lose records and someone to stand up and say "lessons have been learnt"..
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It's too late. They have apparently already been sold to the insurance companies, and life insurance premiums raised accordingly.
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The muppets sold them for - wait for it -- around £2,500..
The person who authorised that should be fired. They must be worth £2.50 per record... so around £150 million...
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>> The muppets sold them for - wait for it -- around £2,500..
>>
>> The person who authorised that should be fired. They must be worth £2.50 per record...
>> so around £150 million...
>>
"It boasts that “uniquely” they were able to combine these details with information from credit ratings agencies, such as Experian, which record the lifestyle habits of milllions of consumers."
So medical records + post codes + Experian data means it's possible to identify individuals from the records and load premiums accordingly.
I was actually quite in favour of the scheme as originally proposed. Not any more.
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"The £2,220 purchase in 2012 was made by the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries – a professional body for professionals who work for insurance and investment companies. It was then handed to another society for actuaries, which published guidance on how to "refine" critical illness cover.
The spokeswoman for HSCIC said: "The HSCIC believes greater scrutiny should have been applied by our predecessor body prior to an instance where data was shared with an actuarial society."
I wonder what they thought the insurance companies wanted the information for?
What on earth do insurance companies do with information about insurance risks? :)
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Common sense would have suggested that selling records would be controversial.
But selling records for peanuts has all the downsides and NO upsides.
As I say, whoever auithorised it is unfit to make any decisions on anything .
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£2500 would barely cover the cost of preparing and extracting the data, which is probably where the number came from.
This sounds pretty serious - it reads as if they thought they were passing age and postcode on a non-identifiable basis, which was then linked with other databases to identify individuals. I'd be surprised if that happened.
What the insurers have probably done is looked at disease and death risk by age and postcode on a more granular basis and with a higher confidence level than they were able to do previously, and applied that to their criteria, rather than identifying individuals.
Whatever, there are more questions than answers in that report. And if some premiums have gone some, some more should have gone down.
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Does anyone actually read all those newspaper reports and extract what really happened?
Your hospital records (only Hospital) BEFORE the big database were sold. Opting out of a DIFFERENT database won't change that. Ever considered that by opting out you may be LESS protected?
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"I was actually quite in favour of the scheme as originally proposed. Not any more."
Same here. I'd always thought that a great deal could be learned by pooling nationwide data e.g. safety and effictiveness of drugs, and I thought that's what was going to happen. But, alas, it all looks rather more sinister with a huge potential for loss of confidentiality - and I've gone right off the idea. Am I correct in thinking that the project has been shelved for 6 months?
What does Lygonos, or any other medics on here think?
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>>What does Lygonos, or any other medics on here think?
If insurance companies want this kind of data they can acquire it and pay for it themselves in the old fashioned way: market research.
As for drug companies/academics getting their hands on it - this would need serious supervision so that they couldn't then sell on the data.
Plus I'd want accountable people (public servants/ministers/etc) so I'd know who to roger with a splintered broom handle when it inevitably all goes mams up.
All this data in electronic form would be a 'mare to police properly.
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>>
>> I was actually quite in favour of the scheme as originally proposed. Not any more.
>>
Well that will teach you!
The public is remarkably slow to realise that you cannot trust anything any government, organisation, watchdog, or official ever says. In fact, it is always safer to assume the opposite.
There are rigorous safeguards = of course there are no safeguards
We would never release information for commercial purposes = we have already sold it
The system is extremely secure = we will leave briefcases and computer discs on the tube
It is encrypted and fully secure = hackers and terrorists are about to break in
There have been isolated lapses in security = that was our predecessor organisation, we have now changed the name.
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My wife was very clear on wanting to opt out. She spent her career in the NHS and had many professional problems due to lost, missing or plain inaccurate records, hence does not trust it's data control system.
I have an additional beef, that my local general hospital cannot access my GP surgery records as their computers are not compatible. As a result, if I have to attend hospital, I always take a summarised A4 case history, including current medication. For one admission, I took three copies, all gratefully received for different purposes.
I hasten to add that these are both otherwise excellent establishments.
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>> My wife was very clear on wanting to opt out. She spent her career in
>> the NHS and had many professional problems due to lost, missing or plain inaccurate records,
>> hence does not trust it's data control system.
>>
>> I have an additional beef, that my local general hospital cannot access my GP surgery
>> records as their computers are not compatible.
Well with your wife opting thats never going to happen for her now is it.
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Medical records for sale! - Cliff Pope
