Security News > 2022 > August > Decisions on health data sharing should not be taken by politicians, citizen juries find

As the NHS in England is set to launch a competition for a far-reaching patient data platform, a public consultation has said decisions about health data sharing should not be taken by politicians.

A report by England's National Data Guardian, an independent watchdog for health data appointed by the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, found that in citizen juries consulted on health data, "Very few jurors wanted decisions about the future of these initiatives to be taken by the minister or organization accountable for them. Most believed that an independent body of experts and lay people should assess the data sharing initiatives."

77 percent of jurors were very much in support of OpenSAFELY, the research model proposed by Ben Goldacre, leader of an academic team at Oxford University that uses large health datasets, "Because they considered it to be the most transparent, trustworthy, and secure of the three data sharing initiatives."

The report comes on the eve of the formal launch of a competition to support a Federated Data Platform, designed to store and analyze patient data in England.

NHS Digital received direction from NHS England and Improvement but could use its discretion to not comply with a direction from the central health service to collect data and to establish specific information systems.

"The report said the DHSC had committed to"ensure arrangements for independent scrutiny of NHS England's exercise of its data functions, including all data requests, and the governance of data handling within the organisation and the strengthening of safeguards on a statutory basis, a proposal the NDG strongly supported.

News URL

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2022/08/31/uk_health_data_share/