How do others feel about their medical information being shared and have they chose to opt out? I an undecided but leaning to not sharing it as I do not trust it not to be used for other purposes despite what they say and unsure how safe it will be.
What difference will it make if I do opt out? Am I being paranoid?
Thanks - well, it'll be no different from everything else really, and some NHS providers ARE private organisations these days, some of our NHS work is undertaken in BUPA hospitals. It doesn't bother me sufficiently to want to opt out - as I said at the beginning, I'd rather my medical records were available to wherever I happen to need the care. That won't happen if there isn't data-sharing.
what happens if its known you have a certain condition, and can't get insurance because of it.
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Drug and insurance companies will from later this year be able to buy information on patients – including mental health conditions and diseases such as cancer, as well as smoking and drinking habits – once a single English database of medical data has been created.
take for example travel insurance, supposed that this info is now in the open domain, and you need travel insurance to go to Spain, they look up that you have a condition, say osteoarthritis, what is to stop them saying you won't get the cover as you have a condition that cause you to make claims if you need urgent medical care in Spain. I can't think of a better example, perhaps some can see what i am getting at.
the last computer info cock-up the one that wasted £ 1bn and no system, one of the defects was that they couldnt limit the access once you gained entry to the system.
But emmie, you're supposed to declare those conditions anyway when you sign up for travel insurance.. so as long as you're honest, there's nothing new to learn from your medical records. As it is, they just write to your GP if they need any further information, they do that already.
I,used to do IT work for a company back in 2001 that sold medical data. It was owned by three Doctors. They had a license to collect data from GP surgery , strip off data that could ID the patient and then created a database , that they sold to medical,research about the globe. Hundreds of thousands of records.
They also helped create sample searches ...ie how many people on a certain drug , lived for x years with condition ...