NHS email encryption

[Adrian Midgley]

David Hansen wrote:
> On 31 Aug 2007 at 13:06, Roland Perry wrote:
>
>   
>>> For most of the population of the UK I'm not convinced that any study
>>> would be that more useful with the whole of the postcode, compared to
>>> just the first part of the postcode.
>   

> The medical research mob are keen to point to the bod who removed the 
> pump handle in London. However, he did not get his fountain pen out and 
> spend all his time trying to crunch numbers.
>   
JOhn Snow.
He mapped the area, then plotted on his map each Cholera case.
THen determined, on the ground I think, for each house in the area which
of the two pumps they went to to get tehir water.
He demonstrated that the families who got water from the Broad St pump
tended to get Cholera, and the familes who went to  the other pump
tended not to.

Then, having crunched his numbers thus, he went and removed the handle
of the Broad St Pump.


He also gave anaesthetics, and has a pub named after him, not so very
far from the right place.


I do not think he would have found the whole postcode more useful than
the partial postcode, but he would have found it more difficult with
anonymous abstracted data, I think.

If someone felt like writing a demonstration of how to repeat that
investigation while maintaining forward anonymity(?) then that might be
a considerably persuasive demonstration of an argument.

Written in fountain pen, by all means.
Man:  http://www.ganfyd.org/index.php?title=John_Snow
Disease: http://www.ganfyd.org/index.php?title=Cholera
Map: http://www.ganfyd.org/images/2/2c/John_Snow_cholera_map.jpg  (If I
was told it was fountain pen, I'd believe it)


Some of the fools in my mob know stuff nevertheless.

-- 
A