The company I did IT work for in 2001 made the records anonymous.
All they knew was sex , age and area person lived in (Glasgow , London , southwest of uk , Wales ....).
That way they could do query such as ;
How many people living in London with asthma on this treatment had good results and compare with someone living in Wales rural area ....
At the time they put the data on CD’s and sold it to university all over the world for research.
Thing I was amazed by was they got data samples from GP’s for free at the time.
This place had an office in a really old brick building from Victorian times on York Road near Kings Cross station. I worked the odd late night (when I could take database down) and when I left late at night I would occasionally get propositioned by the local working girls as I hurriedly made way towards Kings Cross tube station or waited for a taxi.
As said, I will wait to get back home and get information from the BMJ and other sources reserved for the medical profession (and to which I have access).
A trusted friend has just sent me this
''there’s information on the NHS website. It’s not randomised data, it’s all of your medical records together in a chunk. Officially your identification will be encoded - but medical and data experts have been raising concerns that this protection can be quite easily removed by someone who knows what they’re doing, and some have claimed this has already happened to some of the data the NHS already shares.
I have no problem at all with NHS professionals having access to my identifiable data, or to medical researchers having it as randomised data. The problem for me is that this allows the transfer of my potentially identifiable data - all my medical records, and my children’s - to pretty much any third party.
I work with data privacy law and can’t see how having this transfer as an opt out rather than an opt in doesn’t break the law. Again, a lot of people have raised that. But they are pressing on anyway, and with zero public awareness''.
That's apparently part of the fake news that's going around, and as is the way with it, it often gets repeated by people we trust - you've also done the same here, and some people may trust you, so you shouldn't think that just because it came from a trusted friend makes it any more likely to be true.
The entire healthcare industry had been looking at ways to better collect and analyse population-level data over the last several decades, and patient data has been very much at the fore of their (our, I could say, historically at least) efforts. The need for it to be anonymised has been set in stone for a long time, and all analyses using it will always assume that to be the case. All else apart, anyone using non-anonymised data would be in big trouble with the regulators, just as much as anyone who was trying to sell it.
Really, you've just been hooked by a carefully fake-news baited fishing line.
Since the UK government paid for the treatment it seems reasonable enough that all the information belongs to government rather than the patient.
If you went privately & paid yourself you would have an excellent argument.
My wife had a CT scan last week & some pathology at a private hospital. They asked if she wanted the information uploaded up on the goverment database so you yourself & any Dr's of your choice can log in & see all your medical records.
It is free at the point of sale More than 50% of families receive more in benefits than they pay in taxes / national insurance. The vast majority of people do not pay enough to cover their own share of their health costs so is in effect FREE.
''SPOILER: no. Hand on heart, it’s difficult to summon anything other than deep suspicion, born of bitter experience, about the fact that NHS Digital has barely informed GPs, waiting till the last minute to order them to submit the records of every patient under their care, where they will become a permanent and irreversible part of the new database. Neither the British Medical Association nor the Royal College of GPs have endorsed this process. Patients have until 23 June to opt out, and most don’t even know about it.
Once again, a ragtag band of privacy campaigners, concerned doctors and David Davis MP are mounting a rearguard action, with legal threats sent to the government today.
Why are experts so worried, then, when Matt Hancock and friends only want to heal the world? Before we even answer that, do be aware that there is ALREADY a safe, secure way for researchers to access genuinely anonymised data on Covid – the Trusted Research Environment. The data NHS Digital will store is pseudonymised, and it says it’ll only be shared with commercial third parties for “research and planning purposes”. But it would be relatively simple to re-identify that data – particularly for those with cross-referencing access to other databases, to say nothing of the risk of the third-party breaches it opens up. According to the very much un-promoted page on the NHS website, the NHS will be able to unlock the pseudonymisation codes “in certain circumstances, and where there is a valid legal reason”. (You might assume they’ve called the new data grab Honestlywhat’stheworstthatcouldhappen.data, but instead they’ve gone with GPDPR.)
As for why they’re effectively rebooting a failed plan now, with GPs already drowning in a backlog of pandemic-delayed care, it does feel like the perfect moment for the famously competent department of health to do a teeny-tiny thing they in no way need cover for.''
If you're moving abroad on a permanent basis, you'll no longer automatically be entitled to medical treatment under normal NHS rules. This is because the NHS is a residence-based healthcare system.
You'll have to notify your GP practice so you and your family can be removed from the NHS register.''
As said above. if you are still registered with your GP, a) s/he still getting paid for you b) as they all limit the number on their books, and as most have full lists- it means someone new in the area cannot register. In some areas with a large turnover of residents, this can be a real problem.