NHS: Cybersecurity

Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd May 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

The noble Baroness is highlighting a historic problem about interoperability between different bits of the NHS in England. That is absolutely fair enough. I would highlight two things that we are doing. First, the National Data Guardian for Health and Care has defined 10 data standards that should apply to both security and interoperability between different systems, and those now apply in all key NHS contracts, including the standard NHS contract. Secondly, we have launched a programme to appoint up to five local health and care record exemplars, which will provide interactive and interoperable data for patients for their direct care—so that the issue we have at the moment of data sometimes falling between different institutions will not happen any more.

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen (Con)]

My Lords, obviously data security is absolutely vital, but so is the collection of data. If we are going to move forward it is so important that we collect that data for research and treatment. Can my noble friend the Minister give us some kind of indication of how we can make sure that the general public feel happy to give their data to the health service?

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

My noble friend makes an excellent point. Not only is it critical that data is joined up for direct care—quite rightly, patients are amazed when that does not happen—it is an absolutely essential resource for research into new treatments. One thing we are doing to try to provide that reassurance to the public, which has not always been there, is introducing a new data opt-out at the end of this month to provide that reassurance for patients who do not want to be part of it. We are focused on providing that resilience and security so that they can be confident that, when the NHS holds their data, it uses it securely, safely and legally.