Security News > 2022 > March > NHS Digital's demise bad for 55 million patients' privacy – ex-chairman

Ten months after attempts first began to extract the medical information of 55 million citizens in England, NHS Digital's former chairman is warning the merger of the agency with NHS England threatens the privacy of people's personal data.

The view was that if a patient had chosen to use the NHS they had implicitly agreed that their data could be used for the benefit of the NHS. Writing in trade publication the British Medical Journal, Kingsley Manning said health secretary Sajid Javid's decision to merge NHS Digital into NHS England and NHS Improvement last year was a "Retrograde step not least in the context of this government's clear intent to weaken the constraints on the use of patient data."

Founded as the Health and Social Care Information Centre, IT and data arm NHS Digital received direction from NHS England, the central health service body charged with executing government policy in the NHS and paying health service providers.

"In my experience, the general approach of NHS England, including of its clinicians, was that much of the guidance and regulations with respect to the use of patient [data] was seen as unnecessary. The view was that if a patient had chosen to use the NHS they had implicitly agreed that their data could be used for the benefit of the NHS," Manning said.

Last July, NHS Digital announced its second delay to what had been called the biggest data grab in NHS history of 55 million Englander's health records, and introduced new caveats to the extraction of personal medical information from GP systems.

"The demise of NHS Digital will go unnoticed by the vast majority of the population. But its absorption into NHS England is a step in the wrong direction, signalling a policy approach which not only challenging the basic right of patients with respect to their own data but may also, ultimately, prove self-defeating," Manning said.

News URL

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2022/03/04/nhs_digital_privacy_bmj_article/