p2pnet - rss feed: Victory for UK medical patients
p2pnet.net News:- The British government says it’ll be OK for UK citizens to be spineless.
In 2002 prime minister Tony Blair approved a scheme to spend billions on a new IT system for the National Health Service, says Guardian Online.
But civil liberty campaigners fear people’s medical secrets would be, “vulnerable to computer hackers,” says the story.
Blair was, “captivated” by the vision of a national database, nick-named The Spine, containing the medical records of 50 million patients throughout England.
But promises of electronic security locks were mistrusted and On November 1, the Guardian carried a coupon compiled by Ross Anderson, professor of security engineering at Cambridge University.
“It prompted 1,351 people to write to Patricia Hewitt, the health secretary, using the coupon or words from it, to demand their medical records should not be uploaded,” Guardian Online continues.
Now, people will be able to review and correct their records and withhold them from the database, says The Independent.
“Under the taskforce proposals, a public information programme would inform patients they have a set period of time to view their record,” it states, going on:
“They will either be able to view it on the website HealthSpace - which will act as a secure internet “window” onto their record - or can ask their GP for a printed copy. Patients will be invited to correct or amend their record and offer explicit consent for the information to be shared with medical professionals caring for them.
“Those who do not wish their record to be shared electronically at all will be able to opt out, meaning it will remain in their GP surgery. After a set period of time - possibly around two months - it would be assumed that patients who have not viewed their record have given implied consent for it to be shared.”
For now, anyone who can demonstrate they’re suffering “mental distress through having their record held electronically, even in the GP surgery, “will have the right to ask for it to be removed,” adds The Independent.
If your Net access is blocked by government restrictions, try Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies. Go here for the official download, here for the p2pnet download, and here for details. And if you’re Chinese and you’re looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent web site blocking outside of China. Download it here.
Also See:
Guardian Online - How patients’ protests forced a rethink on NHS computer records, December 16, 2006
The Independent - Patients allowed to block e-records, December 18, 2006
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