Data Sharing Review

[Michael Simpson]

On 7/12/08, Mary Hawking <maryhawking@tigers.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> The report on data sharing commissioned from Dr Mark Walport (Welcome Trust)
> and Richard Thomas has been published: hardly surprisingly - seeing the
> interests of one of the authors - it is very keen to allow researchers full
> access to medical records - and seems to think that these will be held on a
> central database for the whole of England. I don't think there is the full
> support for making medical records available for research among the medical
> profession that is claimed.
>

As a medic with an interest in developing an electronic patient
register i would be unhappy with the concept of any data sharing
without the specific consent of the patient being given *every* time
that their data is to be accessed by anyone.

The state seems to have real problems with the idea of accountability
and without clear mechanisms in place to implement *all* of the 3As
and a demonstration of what they actually mean then it would be my
view that any current proposals are flawed.

cf recent House of Lords ruling on FOI attempt to access info on
leukaemia clusters + all 999 call data from Scotland being lost in
transit without any real reason for sending live data to a third party
by post in the first place.

Mike Simpson
Medical Officer - Glasgow Addiction Service
also not one of the "medical mob"