I think this Country has an exceptional reality that does not exist in any other Country in the World (including the highest number of employees for a public organisation, second only to the Republic of China): there is an immensely opaque web of relationships among NHS structures and theirs suppliers / providers, the world of academic and research institutions, the media and the world of charities in their widest acception (I mean including politically supported movements, not for profit organisations and local / national and international lobbies) - all exchanging patients data.
Besides any other consideration, I think that a good way to start being aware that such reality constitutes per se an extremely risky context (not just for patients' privacy but also for... patients treatments, doctors' decision making processes and the overall health of the nation) would be more transparency about these relationships.
So it would be a good think to have published not just data on individual surgeons' performance or on patient mortality statistics, but also for any surgery / GP / hospital or care home, also the number of people affected by UTIs, PIDs or other inflammatory diseases (for instance) after clinical exams and tests, number and names of suppliers for hygienic tools or any other supply, number, sex and age of people affected with cronic diseases that are also on benefits in the correspondent local authority, number of stories published by media and social media, funds received via whatever channel, including collaborations with national and foreign universities and so on and so on.
Confidentiality may be better guaranteed where there is transparency on who is managing what data and why - as most of the abuses happen because they can be easily deceived hiding or misrepresenting the context.
Brunella Longo
Information Management Adviser
http://www.brunellalongo.co.uk
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
All archives of messages are stored permanently and are
available to the world wide web community at large at
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/data-protection.html
If you wish to leave this list please send the command
leave data-protection to [log in to unmask]
All user commands can be found at http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/help/commandref.htm
Any queries about sending or receiving messages please send to the list owner
[log in to unmask]
Full help Desk - please email [log in to unmask] describing your needs
To receive these emails in HTML format send the command:
SET data-protection HTML to [log in to unmask]
(all commands go to [log in to unmask] not the list please)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
