Published 24 September 2008, doi:10.1136/bmj.a1814
Cite this as: BMJ 2008;337:a1814

News

English NHS says patient consent necessary before record seen on screen

Michael Cross

1 London

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Five years after embarking on an IT programme to make health records available electronically, the NHS in England has conceded that patients should be asked for permission before their data are called up on screen.

A new consent procedure, announced last week, will bring English practice into line with that of Wales and Scotland and promises to defuse one of the bitterest controversies over the NHS national programme for IT.

The process involves the summary care record. This is a set of basic data about each registered NHS patient, such as current drugs and allergies, made available to all NHS organisations through a national system called the "spine."

The programme has always insisted that by registering for NHS treatment patients give implied consent for these data to be shared. It has offered patients who object two levels of opting out. However, privacy groups and medical professional organisations, led by the . . . [Full text of this article]


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to StumbleUpon StumbleUpon   Add to Technorati Technorati    What's this?

Access jobs at BMJ Careers
Whats new online at Student BMJ