A government minister has said that data on a central
database of millions ofconfidential health recordswill be
made available to police where there is an "overriding public
interest".
Ben Bradshaw, the minister in charge of the NHS's £12.4bn
National Programme for IT, has said that police will have
access to data on the Secondary Uses Service (SUS) database where
"it is in the overriding public interest", there is statutory
authority, or the courts have made an order requiring
disclosure.
He made the disclosure in answer to a parliamentary question by
Conservative MP Jeremy Wright.
Bradshaw did not define what was meant by the phrase "overriding
public interest".
Some GPs are concerned that allowing police access to the
national electronic database of patient records information is a
step towards allowing access to other public authorities - such as
social services - and later on to private organisations, including
employers and insurance companies.
The SUS database is to be supported by a database of millions of
patient records. The database will draw from local detailed care
records of patients and 50 million summary care records.
The SUS system has technical design features that allow data
from different sources relating to the same person to be linked.
The data is "pseudonymised", which means that records are made
anonymous to healthcare researchers, but the names and personal
details of patients can be easily linked to individual records if
police and other government authorities require it.
SeeTony Collins' IT projects blog on police searches of NHS
records