The chairwoman of an association for parents, midwives and other
healthcare professionals says she is opting out of a national
database of health records because it may prove impossible to
correct data mistakes.
Beverley Beech, who is chairwoman of the Association for
Improvements in Maternity Services, says she is particularly
concerned about plans for more data sharing by government agencies
and departments.
She was speaking to Computer Weekly after the publication this
week of
Database
State, a report commissioned by the Joseph Rowntree Reform
Trust from the Foundation for Information Policy Research.
The report lists 46 big government databases and gives each one
a red, amber or green light according to concerns about privacy and
the Human Rights Act.
Beech said she knows of at least two instances where mothers
have discovered mistakes in their social services records, which
they have been unable to correct. She says that mothers are now too
fearful to tell midwives they have post-natal depression in case
this information ends up on a social services database, which is
shared with the local council, with the result that action is taken
to remove their babies and put them into care.
Beech has written to her GP to ensure her own health files are
not uploaded to the Summary Care Record, a national database of
records being run by BT and NHS Connecting for Health under the
NHS's £12.7bn National Programme for IT (NPfIT).
The main objective of the NPfIT is one day to have 50 million
patient files on the Summary Care Record service. But some GPs have
opted out of having their own medical details put on the database.
If many patients opt out too, doctors may not use it to look up any
patient histories of allergies, adverse drug reactions, or
medications.
On the day the Database State was published, Beech told ITV
News, "There was a mother who was put on the case notes as having
had postnatal depression. She did not in fact have it. It ended up
[with] her going to court, to fight to get her baby back, because
it was taken." The woman won the case, had her baby returned and
the court papers, said Beech, show the judge had accepted that the
woman had not had postnatal depression.
Seven years later, said Beech, the woman became pregnant again.
"Up pops on the database a little flag saying 'this woman has had
her baby removed for child protection reasons'."
Social Services, said Beech, wanted to remove the woman's child
at birth. But she was able to prove, using the court papers, that
the database was wrong. Beech told Computer Weekly that the woman
has since been unable to have the information corrected.
"It is impossible to have information like that corrected," said
Beech. "I am very concerned about plans to share more data. It is
seen not just by social services and councils, but police and
schools."