NHS Tayside and Lanarkshire guilty of data breaches
Two Scottish health boards have been found in breach of data protection laws for leaving patients’ personal information on paper records at abandoned hospitals. NHS Tayside and NHS Lanarkshire have been ordered to sign an agreement to comply with the Data Protection Act (DPA) or face possible future prosecution. The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) found […]
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National media attention for anti-smartcard group
In Germany this week doctors and civil rights activists joined forces to organise a boycott of the German smartcard programme, attracting huge media interest, including national TV. The new alliance went public last Friday with a joint press conference at which it proclaimed the explicit goal of halting the smartcard health programme and move to […]
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SCR opt-out sets ‘onerous’ conditions, says GP
Patients who want to opt-out from having a Summary Care Record will have to apply for exemption under section 10 of the Data Protection Act, on the grounds that it will cause them ‘substantial damage or distress’, according to new GP guidance. Dr Paul Cundy, chairman of the General Practitioners Committee Information Technology subcommittee, told […]
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Data from half a million patients to aid research
UK Biobank, a medical research initiative charity, is to start using patient data to provide reliable assessment of different causes of diseases, from 15 April. Andy Harris, a systems architect for the charity told an Oracle press briefing at the World Health Care Congress in Barcelona that the charity would have access to patient lists […]
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Row Over Health Records Review Secrecy
Campaigners this week alleged that the Department of Health (DH) had broken undertakings to keep fees low for patient access to manual health records and had further worsened the situation by conducting a review of health records and data protection in secret. The DH issued a defence against some reports of the row, but conceded […]
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