Tony Collins reports:
An NHS trust at the forefront of work on the £12.7bn NHS IT scheme has called in police after a breach of smartcard security compromised the confidentiality of hundreds of electronic records.
Patients in Hull have expressed their dismay that an unauthorised NHS employee has accessed their confidential records; and the local primary care trust, NHS Hull, says it is “shocked” at the breach of security by a member of staff who has since left.
[...]
GP Paul Cundy, a former spokesman on GP IT for the British Medical Association, said of the Hull incident: “This confidentiality breach, in one of Connecting for Health’s showcase systems, highlights the inherent dangers of the Summary Care Record and all shared record systems. This is alarming news, but precisely what was predicted.”
Read more on ComputerWeekly.com.
Seen at the Fortuzero blog:
The NHS Confidentiality campaign was set up to protect patient confidentiality and to provide a focus for patient-led opposition the government’s NHS Care Records System. This system is designed to be a huge national database of patient medical records and personal information (sometimes referred to as the NHS ’spine’) with no opt-out mechanism for patients at all. It is being rolled out during 2007, and is objectionable for many of the same reasons as the government’s proposed ID database.
YOUR PRIVACY
Your medical confidentiality is at risk from this new database, as over a million NHS employees and central government bureaucrats will have access to not only your medical records but also your demographic details—name, address, NHS Number, GP details, phone number (even if it’s ex-directory) and mobile number.
Read more at Fortuzero and see the site they link to, TheBigOptOut.org, for more info.
Bury Times Reporter writes:
Thousands of patients in the borough can now access their health records online.
They are among some of the first in the country to source health information via an online personal organiser known as HealthSpace.
Available since 2003, the service (www.healthspace.nhs.uk) gives patients the opportunity to store personal health information including height, weight and blood pressure readings to keep a track of their own health.
A new feature of HealthSpace is that patients registering for an “advanced account” can now view their summary care record online. This includes key information about a patient’s health which is held in their medical records, such as medicines they are taking, any bad reactions they may have had to medicines and any allergies.
Full story -Â ThisisLancashire
Seen at EveningStar 24:
AN NHS worker in Norfolk has become embroiled in a serious security breach after sending a patient’s medical records to Buckingham Palace by mistake.
Highly confidential information was sent to the royal residence after the female member of staff typed in the wrong email address instead of sending it to a medic at Norfolk Primary Care Trust (PCT).
Today health bosses are remaining tight-lipped about exactly where in county’s NHS the member of staff worked but said a full investigation was being carried out.
Breaches, Internet, News, Non-U.S., Non-U.S. breaches
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breach, Breaches, Buckingham Palace, email, NHS, Norfolk Primary Care Trust, Security
Kevin Barnes writes in the Croydon Guardian:
A sensitive document detailing the treatments of premature babies at Mayday Hospital was discovered at a supermarket in Sutton.
An investigation was ordered after a shopper stumbled on the highly confidential patient records while browsing a DVD rack at Morrisons.
John Dunne, 61, discovered the names, dates of birth and NHS numbers of 20 babies being treated at Mayday Hospital in Croydon on the disc.
The lost file also disclosed their medical problems, what medication they were given and plans for their future treatment.
Read More – Croydon Guardian
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