NHS patient data to be shared with researchers
pharmafile | January 6, 2014 | News story | Medical Communications, Research and Development, Sales and Marketing | NHS, data, online, transparency
NHS England will begin to gather patient data from GPs for the first time this spring to ‘improve care and services’.
Information will also be shared with researchers, including pharma firms – although all data will be anonymous.
The news follows prime minister David Cameron’s announcement in August that changes to the NHS Constitution would open up a bigger data pool for academia and industrial R&D.
Leaflets explaining the new information sharing system will be sent out to 26.5 million households this month.
The flyers say that pooling and analysing GP records will improve care, help identify at-risk patients, guide management decisions and “make sure that NHS organisations receive the correct payments for the services they provide”.
Patients who do not want their data to be shared must speak to their GPs to opt out of the new system. Those who are happy for their health information to be collected and shared do not need to act as they will be automatically entered into the initiative.
The move is likely to be welcomed by industry group the ABPI, whose big data ‘road map’ called for easier access to patient data on its launch in November last year.
Information will be gathered by the NHS Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC), the non-departmental body responsible for healthcare data collection.
The centre has been collating hospital admission data from around the country since the 1980s.
HSCIC medical director Mark Davies moved to address privacy concerns, commenting: “We want everyone to feel confident that their information is kept private and used in non-identifiable form to improve the quality of health and social care for everyone.
“Equally important is that everyone knows that they have a choice and can raise an objection by simply talking to their GP.”
Dr Imran Rafi, chair of the Clinical Innovation and Research Centre at the Royal College of General Practitioners said that he ‘fully’ supported the new data initiative – although he stressed that it was important for patients to understand how the NHS uses and shares their information.
Rafi added: “GPs understand the importance of sharing information appropriately both as part of delivering clinical care and for wider uses, such as research and for planning NHS services.”
Hugh McCafferty
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