[anon1385]

Medical data is a great tool but the problem is that these stories are poisoning public good will. There is no point telling people to calm down when they have just learned that records of every meeting they ever had with their doctor were available on the public internet and identifiable to anybody who knows their address and DOB. That is something that people rightly get upset about.

Additionally, it's not like these events are all just accidents or incompetence. The UK government made a policy decision to sell medical records to insurance companies[1].

Also, is it really true that release to the insurance industry is unacceptable to the HSCIC? Its own information governance assessment from August says that access to individual patients records can "enable insurance companies to accurately calculate actuarial risk so as to offer fair premiums to its [sic] customers. Such outcomes are an important aim of Open Data, an important government policy initiative."[2]

[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/nhs/10659147/Patient-recor...

[2] http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/28/care-da...

[timthorn]

Not underplaying at all - your point is spot on - but this data only relates to hospital attendances and not GP interactions. Currently GP interactions are not available in the database, and that's the point of care.data.

[anon1385]

Sorry. Yes you are quite right.

When I said public internet I was actually referring to the things Ben Goldacre has been tweeting ( https://twitter.com/bengoldacre/status/440475049880195073 ) and I'm not sure which data set he is talking about.