It's worth noting that this appears to only affect NHS England .
Well spotted, I think we all tend to forget that there are actually 4 separate NHSs in the UK - one each for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland:
NHS patient data to be made available for sale to drug and insurance firms
11–20 of 63 posts
Re: NHS patient data to be made available for sale to drug and insurance firms
#12This is mostly a good thing. The NHS is of course a huge trove of valuable information, but there are some incredibly compelling reasons to make it available to anyone who can improve patient care - start-ups should be interested in this too.
Re: NHS patient data to be made available for sale to drug and insurance firms
#13"The extracted information will contain NHS numbers, date of birth, postcode, ethnicity and gender." Yikes! Date of birth AND postcode? Pseudoanonymous that is not.
Even if this data (date of birth, postcode, etc) would be removed, it would still be rather trivial for e.g. an insurance company to match these records to their customers. Given one or two insurance claims for doctor's appointments, matching the medical records for identical dates is enough to pinpoint a person with adequate certainty.
Then the insurance company can grep the records for mentions of smoking, drinking, drug use or injuries related to dangerous activities like riding horses, motor racing or skiing. Now that the insurance companies can identify patients in these risk groups, they can proceed to doubling the insurance fees of these people.
I think that the insurance companies should not be able to access medical records like this.
edit: please excuse my ignorance on the UK health care system. In my country, you pay a fixed fee when using public health care and you can claim insurance on that.
Re: NHS patient data to be made available for sale to drug and insurance firms
#14I will be opting out of this thank you very much.
I don't like my insurance company knowing my health status.
If insurance companies are not willing to take risks their in the wrong business.
I want to be able so see who accessed my information so i am able to prove with certainty when a insurance company discriminates against me.
Plus the reason they claim they accessed it would be very important when i demonstrate their misuse of the data.
Re: NHS patient data to be made available for sale to drug and insurance firms
#15I will be opting out of this thank you very much. I don't like my insurance company knowing my health status. If insurance companies are not willing to take risks their in the wrong business. I want to be able so see who accessed my information so i am able to prove with certainty when a insurance company discriminates against me. Plus the reason they claim they accessed it would be very important when i demonstrate…
In most cases the insurance company can just contact your GP, you will have agreed to this during the sign-up.
Re: NHS patient data to be made available for sale to drug and insurance firms
#16I will be opting out of this thank you very much. I don't like my insurance company knowing my health status. If insurance companies are not willing to take risks their in the wrong business. I want to be able so see who accessed my information so i am able to prove with certainty when a insurance company discriminates against me. Plus the reason they claim they accessed it would be very important when i demonstrate…
>>>"I don't like my insurance company knowing my health status."
Are you joking? Insurance companies have/need access to all the data about you, otherwise they won't be able to pay providers for the services.
This is equivalent of Tea Party activist proclaiming "Keep government out of my Medicare".
These Privacy FUD articles bring out the worst of HN.
Re: NHS patient data to be made available for sale to drug and insurance firms
#17This is mostly a good thing. The NHS is of course a huge trove of valuable information, but there are some incredibly compelling reasons to make it available to anyone who can improve patient care - start-ups should be interested in this too.
In an ideal society, I totally agree. However, in today's world, such data will mostly be exploited by health insurance companies, credit rating agencies, employers, and paparazzi. Unless, of course, the government(s) pass laws that protect the rights of the people and limit the influence of the industry, but that is rather the opposite of what has been happening recently.
Re: NHS patient data to be made available for sale to drug and insurance firms
#18I will be opting out of this thank you very much. I don't like my insurance company knowing my health status. If insurance companies are not willing to take risks their in the wrong business. I want to be able so see who accessed my information so i am able to prove with certainty when a insurance company discriminates against me. Plus the reason they claim they accessed it would be very important when i demonstrate…
>>>"I don't like my insurance company knowing my health status." Are you joking? Insurance companies have/need access to all the data about you, otherwise they won't be able to pay providers for the services. This is equivalent of Tea Party activist proclaiming "Keep government out of my Medicare". These Privacy FUD articles bring out the worst of HN.
> This is equivalent of Tea Party activist proclaiming "Keep government out of my Medicare".
I see little conflict of interest between the government and the insured citizens (lower costs, keep healthy people healthy, make sick people healthier), while there is a lot of conflict of interest between private insurers and their (potential) customers (not insure sick people, only insure those healthy people who have little chance of becoming sick, do all they can to avoid paying in case of a claim).
Re: NHS patient data to be made available for sale to drug and insurance firms
#19"The extracted information will contain NHS numbers, date of birth, postcode, ethnicity and gender." Yikes! Date of birth AND postcode? Pseudoanonymous that is not.
Even if this data (date of birth, postcode, etc) would be removed, it would still be rather trivial for e.g. an insurance company to match these records to their customers. Given one or two insurance claims for doctor's appointments, matching the medical records for identical dates is enough to pinpoint a person with adequate certainty. Then the insurance company can grep the records for mentions of smoking, drinking…
It's futile to prevent insurance companies from accessing the records - once information is out there, it's out there for ever. It would be better, IMO, to limit the amount of discrimination that private insurance companies can do - or, even better, eliminate all private insurance companies and provide complete health insurance to every citizen (in which case, data-mining research on health data can truly be useful).
Re: NHS patient data to be made available for sale to drug and insurance firms
#20"The extracted information will contain NHS numbers, date of birth, postcode, ethnicity and gender." Yikes! Date of birth AND postcode? Pseudoanonymous that is not.
Everyone in my household can be uniquely identified by that from someone holding date of birth and postcode data...
Like, say, any insurer...