I thought that this was likely to be for secondary use purposes.
"a new commitment to develop the capability within the NHS National IT
System to facilitate, strictly within the bounds of patient
confidentiality, the recruitment of patients to clinical trials and the
gathering of data to support groundbreaking work on the health of the
population and the effectiveness of health interventions;"
The full press release is at...
http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/newsroom_and_speeches/press/2005/press_100_
05. cfm
How accurate the data will be is, of course, debatable..
MaryH
In message <[log in to unmask]>, Gavin Jamie
<[log in to unmask]> writes
>This is something that has only become official acceptable with the
>advent of computerised notes.
>
>Ten years ago had there been a suggestion to mark the notes of Jew with
>a star of David then there would have been an outcry. As it is there
>are a considerable resistance amongst GPs and one point is unlikely to
>buy them over.
>
>I am not against ethnic monitoring but this can be done without tagging
>the medical record. Much of the data at practice level is available
>from the census, albeit anonymised. Monitoring can be done at other
>stages in an anonymous way also.
>
>Remember that under FOI it is not just HMG that can go digging for
>statistics.
>
--
Mary Hawking
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