New government plan for data-scraping English patient records
Do you want your medical records shared not only with your medical advisers but others, as from 1st July 2021? If not, you'll need to register an opt-out form via your GP before 23rd June.
The official announcement of this plan, early in April, wasn't actively reported and there's been no individual notification of patients, but its downside was reported on the Today programme this morning.
NHS Digital's advice to the public, which no-one will have found for themselves, is at https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/data-collections-and-data-sets/data-collections/general-practice-data-for-planning-and-research/advice-for-the-public. That advice is not objective at all. It's very clearly slanted to persuade us to let our data be scraped - but it includes the telling comment, "We do not allow data to be used solely for commercial purposes." (In other words, the data can be used for commercial purposes as well as medical and/or other research purposes.)
The link from that advice to the opt-out form doesn't seem to work but there's an effective link to the form in the FT article at https://www.ft.com/content/9fee812f-6975-49ce-915c-aeb25d3dd748 .
The official announcement of this plan, early in April, wasn't actively reported and there's been no individual notification of patients, but its downside was reported on the Today programme this morning.
NHS Digital's advice to the public, which no-one will have found for themselves, is at https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/data-collections-and-data-sets/data-collections/general-practice-data-for-planning-and-research/advice-for-the-public. That advice is not objective at all. It's very clearly slanted to persuade us to let our data be scraped - but it includes the telling comment, "We do not allow data to be used solely for commercial purposes." (In other words, the data can be used for commercial purposes as well as medical and/or other research purposes.)
The link from that advice to the opt-out form doesn't seem to work but there's an effective link to the form in the FT article at https://www.ft.com/content/9fee812f-6975-49ce-915c-aeb25d3dd748 .
