Health: Electronic Patient Records

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Thursday 27th April 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, given the continued revelations of data security breaches, along with the absence of a response to last year’s report from Dame Fiona Caldicott, how do the Government intend to avoid a repeat of the fiasco several years ago over care.data? Does the Minister agree that it is vital that patients are given confidence in the security of their data so that they do not withdraw from allowing their data to be used for vital medical research?

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

The noble Baroness is quite right that the National Data Guardian produced her report last summer. There has been the intention to reply to that report but purdah has had an inevitable impact, unfortunately. She made points in that report about the simplified process for opting out but was also clear that vital uses can be made of suitably anonymised data which benefit patients directly, particularly through medical and clinical research, and about making sure that patients know about that so that they can choose to have their data shared. It is encouraging that at the moment, only around 2% of all patients have opted to have their summary care records not shared. This suggests that when it is explained properly and there are suitable safeguards, people are happy to share their data.