CfH pulls Health Informatics Community website

NHS Connecting for Health has taken down its Health Informatics Community website following the revelation that personal details of conference delegates could be accessed through the site.

The DH agency pulled the Informatics Community website, which is designed to enable people to network and share information on health IT issues, after a Channel 4 news report last Thursday on further problems with the Medical Training Application System (MTAS) – a non-CfH project.  The Informatics website is one CfH inherited from the NHS Information Authority.

The apparently relatively minor data problem on the Health Informatics Community NHS website was reported as embarrassing to Connecting for Health boss Richard Granger, who yesterday told the Commons Health Select Committee that if he had been running the junior doctors’ MTAS system it might not have gone wrong

Channel 4 revealed there had been an apparent lapse on Informatics Community website which the director general’s CFH health IT agency is responsible for. An Excel spreadsheet containing delegates’ email addresses, mobile phone and other contact details was accessible through part of the Health Informatics website.

A CfH spokesperson told EHI that the site had been taken down last night – immediately after the Channel 4 news broadcast – "as a precautionary measure". CfH declined to say how long it was likely to be unavailable.

CfH told EHI the problem only affected the details of 20 people who had attended a conference last year, and subsequently agreed to have their details shared. The agency said that "one doctor complained" subsequently, but because the webpage had been cached by Google they had remained accessible to anyone with the right URL.

"We have asked Google to remove the cached link," said the CfH spokesperson. "We’re trying to establish how you break the link on the Google search engine."