Asked by: Lord Clement-Jones (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what plans they have for NHS Digital to review its public cloud guidance following the judgment by the European Court of Justice in the Schrems II case.
Answered by Lord Bethell
The cloud security suite of documents is currently being reviewed as part of NHS Digital’s regular management cycle and is due for re-issue before the end of the year. NHS Digital is currently awaiting updated guidance following the judgement by the European Court of Justice from the Information Commissioner's Office. Once received it will be incorporated into its guidance for the health and social care sector.
Asked by: Lord Clement-Jones (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the report by Target Ovarian Cancer Voices of women with ovarian cancer: the coronavirus pandemic and its impact, published on 13 July; and what steps they are taking to mitigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the diagnosis and treatment of, and support for, women with ovarian cancer.
Answered by Lord Bethell
No assessment has been made.
On 8 June 2020, the National Cancer Director and the National Clinical Director for Cancer issued a further letter of guidance to National Health Service cancer services on Second phase of NHS response to COVID-19 for cancer services. The letter notes that the work for local systems and Cancer Alliances to identify ring-fenced diagnostic and surgical capacity for cancer should now be well advanced, so that referrals, diagnostics and treatment can be brought back to pre-pandemic levels at the earliest opportunity to minimise potential harm, and to reduce the scale of the post-pandemic surge in demand. The new guidance is based on three key principles: capacity, fairness and confidence. Cancer Alliances should work with their regional teams to provide such services.
Asked by: Lord Clement-Jones (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what plans they have to (1) expand the use of electronic repeat dispensing in the community pharmacy sector, and (2) optimise the use of technology to make community pharmacies fully integrated with other parts of the NHS.
Answered by Lord Bethell
All community pharmacies in England providing NHS services are required to provide electronic repeat dispensing (eRD) as an essential service. We are encouraging general practitioner (GP) practices to use eRD where clinically appropriate and Academic Health Science Networks have been supporting this. As well as reducing GP workload and being more convenient for patients, eRD preserves medicine supplies and makes better use of pharmacists in managing patients’ repeat medication. During COVID-19 we have put in place arrangements to convert electronic prescriptions to eRD where clinically appropriate. Temporary changes to the need for patient consent to enable increased use of electronic repeat dispensing were announced on 4 June 2020.
Building on the foundations delivered under the Integrating Pharmacy across Care Settings programme, we are working with NHSX and NHS Digital to further expand and enhance the digital integration of community pharmacy. Community pharmacies already receive referrals from 111 (telephony or 111 online) to deliver the Community Pharmacy Consultation Service and we are considering how this capability can be extended to incorporate referrals from other areas, for example, general practice. In addition, we are developing the standards and technical requirements for IT system suppliers to develop the interoperability to support the transfer of information between community pharmacy and general practice systems. The priority data sets for this work include flu vaccinations and the emergency supply of medicines.
Asked by: Lord Clement-Jones (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether pharmacy teams and other primary care health professions will have equal access to the personal protective equipment portal.
Answered by Lord Bethell
The majority of personal protective equipment (PPE) continues to be sourced by care providers themselves from wholesalers and as part of our commitment to ensure that the sector receives the PPE it needs, we are ensuring that wholesalers are equipped with the PPE needed for onward sale.
As part of our PPE distribution strategy we are exploring the most effective distribution routes for each provider type, including the potential expansion of the portal’s coverage to other sectors and types of provider.
The PPE Portal acts as an emergency top-up route for providers that cannot obtain sufficient PPE through their usual wholesaler routes. The Department has now invited around 21,000 general practitioners and small social care providers to register and order through the PPE Portal, delivering more than 13 million items of PPE.
Asked by: Lord Clement-Jones (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government, with respect to the trial on the Isle of Wight of the COVID-19 contact tracing application being developed by NHSX, (1) what questions the trial is designed to answer, and (2) whether those questions were discussed with and agreed in advance by NHSX’s Ethics Advisory Board.
Answered by Lord Bethell
The Isle of Wight phase is intended to improve our understanding of how the different components of our COVID-19 response fit together and how parts of the healthcare system interact with each other. It is also an opportunity to test that the underlying technologies and systems work. Our evaluation of the Isle of Wight phase is designed to provide us with answers on the health behaviours of people who use the app and those who do not, the attitude of individuals to the contact tracing app and their experience of using it, how successfully the app fits in to the wider health service processes, and the app’s influence on wider health seeking behaviours. The Ethics Advisory Board is an advisory body and does not approve documentation. Notwithstanding, and in the interests of transparency, an early version of our evaluation questions was shared with them for advice and constructive challenge.
Asked by: Lord Clement-Jones (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what conclusions the NHSX Ethics Advisory Board reached about the COVID-19 contact tracing application trial on the Isle of Wight.
Answered by Lord Bethell
The Ethics Advisory Board (EAB) of the National Health Service COVID-19 app published a letter to the Secretary of State on 24 April which sets out its thinking on the COVID-19 contact tracing application.
In its letter, the EAB sets out six principles that must be upheld to ensure the NHS COVID-19 app achieves that balance. Given the importance of securing and maintaining public trust around this issue, these principles are based around maintaining public trust in the use of data; they include ensuring value, impact, security, accountability, transparency and control.
These principles have been accepted by the Secretary of State and the Board will continue to meet regularly to provide its advice on the app’s progress.
Asked by: Lord Clement-Jones (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what ongoing oversight of the use of the NHSX COVID-19 contact tracing application and the tracing data so gathered the NHSX Ethics Advisory Board will carry out.
Answered by Lord Bethell
The advice and expertise of the Ethics Advisory Board (EAB) is crucial to everything we do and will continue to guide development of the app by identifying, defining, and examining the key ethical considerations, including consideration of the interests of citizens. Their advice will extend to policies and other documents under development by NHSX on the contact tracing application. This will be provided regularly and formally to the App Oversight Board. Advice may be both on questions set by the App Oversight Board, as well as issues which the EAB has proactively identified. This may include verbal advice as well as tabled papers. Minutes from EAB meetings will be published periodically and board members originating from the Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation are providing direct and ongoing policy support to the App Probity Team.