The spy in the GP’s surgery
Alice Miles in the Times details the huge new database that will give thousands of NHS workers unprecedented access to your medical secrets.
The patient record programme — which will include new information, but not existing records — is part of the £6.2-billion IT system being built to cover the whole NHS. It is the biggest civil IT programme in the world, could eventually cost up to £30 billion and will link 240 hospitals, 8,000 surgeries, 100,000 doctors and 380,000 nurses on the internet, enabling computerised appointment bookings, an electronic X-ray archive and online repeat prescriptions (eventually, maybe). The electronic patient record forms a major part of the system. It “sits on the spine”, as one official put it.
What Alice fails to pick up on is the fact that if your NIRN (National Identity Register Number) is used in your electronic patient record, then effectively your medical records – with all their wonderful new vulnerabilities – will be crossreferenced to the National Identity Register. Being assigned your own unique number and having it used in this way gives the government or anyone who can get a job with a public authority the ability to connect together all aspects of your private life, without your consent or knowledge.
