`My Diabetes My Way’ wins top UK award

An innovative project which allows people with diabetes across Scotland electronic access to their medical records has been recognised with a top UK award.

`My Diabetes My Way’, a project led by the University of Dundee and NHS Scotland, has been named winner of the Education and Self-Management Award at the Diabetes UK Annual Professional Conference.

`My Diabetes My Way’ offers people with diabetes anywhere in Scotland online access to their medical records. In addition to explaining all of the clinical measurements that are presented, personalised and tailored information helps people understand and take control of their condition.

The project fought off competition from five other shortlisted candidates from across the UK to win the award.

Dr Scott Cunningham, Technical Lead for My Diabetes My Way, said, “This is fantastic recognition for the work of the My Diabetes My Way team over the last few years. We hope this leads to greater awareness of the service to ensure that anyone with an interest in accessing their records online hears about it and signs up.

“The project is a strong example of the ways in which we can engage with patients and help transform the care, and the quality of information, they receive.”

Anyone with diabetes across all 14 NHS Scotland Health Boards can register online  at: www.mydiabetesmyway.scot.nhs.uk

http://www.dundee.ac.uk/

There was talk of a similar project for the rest of the UK being started this year.

This is my experience of this award winning service. In January my results were mixed up with those of another patient. The other guy's lab results were added to my MDMW records. My graphs now look like roller coasters and do not reflect MY personal results that I work so hard to achieve. I find this completely unacceptable and have written to MDMW several times. They assure me they will remove these incorrect medical records, but still haven't. I will write to them again.

Avocado Sevenfold wrote:This is my experience of this award winning service.  In January my results were mixed up with those of another patient. The other guy's lab results were added to my MDMW records.  My graphs now look like roller coasters and do not reflect MY personal results that I work so hard to achieve. I find this completely unacceptable and have written to MDMW several times.  They assure me they will remove these incorrect medical records, but still haven't.  I will write to them again.

Blimey! The service sounds great in principal until you read something like that!! That's appalling!

I don't rate this lark one bit. We know our medical records have been flogged to insurance companies and big pharma. Government security systems are complete crap. Anyone can get hold of private information these days. Remember when the family allowance records went missing, never to be found regarding 26,000,000 people in the UK.

Whenever the Government say they want to do something for me, I smell four pound of condemned veal.

Avocado Sevenfold wrote:This is my experience of this award winning service.  In January my results were mixed up with those of another patient. The other guy's lab results were added to my MDMW records.  My graphs now look like roller coasters and do not reflect MY personal results that I work so hard to achieve. I find this completely unacceptable and have written to MDMW several times.  They assure me they will remove these incorrect medical records, but still haven't.  I will write to them again.

Doesn't bode well for when it's introduced to the rest of the UK going by your experience

It's my experience that there has always been wrong information on medical records, the only difference with the new/proposed system is that we can find out about it.
Sally

Excellent point, Sally.

As Eddie mentioned, I also see this as a step closer to selling our medical records on to third parties or insurance companies. On the flipped, it would be nice to have a complete record available of all HbA1C's, blood tests etc ( assuming they are correct ).

Yes I agree it's all about selling our records on 'in our own interest' of course.

When I was pregnant with my first born, I was quizzed about my epilepsy. I told the mid-wife I had never been epileptic, and she told me I shouldn't be ashamed of having fits. It took me 10 minutes to get through to her that the surname on some of the notes wasn't mine. Worse still, I knew the person whose notes they were.

zand wrote:Yes I agree it's all about selling our records on 'in our own interest' of course.

When I was pregnant with my first born, I was quizzed about my epilepsy.  I told the mid-wife I had never been epileptic, and she told me I shouldn't be ashamed of having fits.  It took me 10 minutes to get through to her that the surname on some of the notes wasn't mine.  Worse still, I knew the person whose notes they were.  

Good lord!!!!! Imagine what someone could wake up to if that sort of mix up happened in the operating theatres!!

mo1905 wrote:As Eddie mentioned, I also see this as a step closer to selling our medical records on to third parties or insurance companies. On the flipped, it would be nice to have a complete record available of all HbA1C's, blood tests etc ( assuming they are correct ).

A bit late for that Mo.

"The medical records of every NHS hospital patient in the country have been sold for insurance purposes, The Telegraph can reveal.

The disclosure comes days after controversial plans to extract patient data from GP files were put on hold, amid concerns over the scheme.

Those in charge of the programme have repeatedly insisted that it will be illegal for information extracted from GP files to be sold to insurers, who might seek to target customers or put up their prices.

However, a report by a major society of actuaries discloses that it was able to obtain 13 years of hospital data – covering 47 million patients – in order to help insurance companies “refine” their premiums.

The report by the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries details how it was able to use NHS data covering all hospital in-patient stays between 1997 and 2010 to track the medical histories of patients, identified by date of birth and postcode."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/news/10656893/Hospital-records-of-all-NHS-patients-sold-to-insurers.html

This happened back in February 2014. These records were then 'acquired' by big pharma. If you know the right people the records on anyone are very easily 'acquired' But hey, maybe I am just an old conspiracy theorist. Read the small print "date of birth and postcode" A postcode goes down to a very small number of dwellings, how many people have my exact date of birth with my postcode? go figure.

Sheesh!!! How long before we start getting direct marketing via the post or telephone cold calling "Aah,we see from your records that your total cholesterol is a bit on the high side of the NICE guidelines-Now,we can help with that...Are you familiar with what a statin is?"

"On average, there are only about 15 properties in any given postcode. With such a small sample, it's very unlikely that two people will share the same date of birth.

Therefore, patients can be uniquely identified and their highly personal and confidential medical data has been sold to a third party, without their knowledge or consent.

This must surely be a flagrant breach of the Data Protection laws. If so, those responsible should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law."

The best rated comment on the Telegraph article.

When are people going to wake up ? This has all been planned, including deliberate failure of diabetics!

Loose Cannon wrote:"On average, there are only about 15 properties in any given postcode. With such a small sample, it's very unlikely that two people will share the same date of birth.

Therefore, patients can be uniquely identified and their highly personal and confidential medical data has been sold to a third party, without their knowledge or consent.

This must surely be a flagrant breach of the Data Protection laws. If so, those responsible should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law."

The best rated comment on the Telegraph article.

When are people going to wake up ? This has all been planned, including deliberate failure of diabetics!

"It's very unlikely that two people in the same postcode will share the same date of birth....." Really??? have 'they' never heard of twins or triplets?

zand wrote:

Loose Cannon wrote:"On average, there are only about 15 properties in any given postcode. With such a small sample, it's very unlikely that two people will share the same date of birth.

Therefore, patients can be uniquely identified and their highly personal and confidential medical data has been sold to a third party, without their knowledge or consent.

This must surely be a flagrant breach of the Data Protection laws. If so, those responsible should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law."

The best rated comment on the Telegraph article.

When are people going to wake up ? This has all been planned, including deliberate failure of diabetics!

"It's very unlikely that two people in the same postcode will share the same date of birth....."  Really??? have 'they' never heard of twins or triplets?

You are right Zand I had not thought of that and what about quads. I have just galloped down my street and would you believe there are so many multiple birth situations it's err...not exactly significant. BTW I have reported on what we have been told re the details of our private information that has been sold. What haven't we been told?

Loose Cannon said

"You are right Zand I had not thought of that and what about quads. I have just galloped down my street and would you believe there are so many multiple birth situations it's err...not exactly significant. BTW I have reported on what we have been told re the details of our private information that has been sold. What haven't we been told?"

It really does make an ass of data protection laws doesn't it?  Here am I shredding my documents only to find some very personal medical information may have already been sold.  

Yet at the other end of the extreme I can't even request that the student loan company send an annual statement to my son, even though it's his right to get one!  He has to ask himself even though it is their mistake that they haven't sent one.  I'm not asking for anything unusual, it's simply that he's working away and asked me to phone them.  Grrrrr  So when he gets home from working away for 3 weeks he will phone them.....and then ask me to remind him of his password lol.

zand wrote:Loose Cannon said

"You are right Zand I had not thought of that and what about quads. I have just galloped down my street and would you believe there are so many multiple birth situations it's err...not exactly significant. BTW I have reported on what we have been told re the details of our private information that has been sold. What haven't we been told?"

It really does make an ass of data protection laws doesn't it?  Here am I shredding my documents only to find some very personal medical information may have already been sold.  

Yet at the other end of the extreme I can't even request that the student loan company send an annual statement to my son, even though it's his right to get one!  He has to ask himself even though it is their mistake that they haven't sent one.  I'm not asking for anything unusual, it's simply that he's working away and asked me to phone them.  Grrrrr  So when he gets home from working away for 3 weeks he will phone them.....and then ask me to remind him of his password lol.

Jan has been there and done that. She has spent countless hours trying to sort out one of our lads student loan/grant situation. Mercifully he finishes Uni in a month or so's time and has already secured a very good job, working part time now and full-time soon. One of the lucky ones.

Well done him! That's very good news. Yes my son had a job to go to when he left uni too. It was a huge relief.

zand wrote:Well done him!  That's very good news.  Yes my son had a job to go to when he left uni too.  It was a huge relief.

Good news Zand, never has there been a tougher time for youngsters to get a decent job with good money and prospects.

A university degree used to pretty much guarantee a walk into a well paid career. Not so now. Huge numbers of youngsters racking up huge debt to end up flipping burgers !

mo1905 wrote:A university degree used to pretty much guarantee a walk into a well paid career. Not so now. Huge numbers of youngsters racking up huge debt to end up flipping burgers !

This is how the system works.

The bright boys put their heads together and work out there will be no work for the young a few years down the road. A guy says, I know let's send them all to University, that will keep the dole queues and unemployed lists looking good. Another bright spark says, hang on this will cost £billions. An even brighter bloke says, not a problem, we can charge the kids ten grand a year to attend, they can pay for their own unemployment benefit and we can charge them interest. An honest bloke says, hang on a minute will these kids be able to get a well paid job, be able to afford a decent home and live a reasonable life? Mr. Cynical says, don't be a chump, but we can enslave these people to the end of their lives, we can take the working class back to pre war poverty and servitude. Meanwhile hard working honest people get poorer and the rich get richer.

Welcome to the layer cake !

I agree Eddie, trouble is, what's the answer ? The youth of today have a huge no win dilemma.

I suppose my lad was lucky in that he only had to pay £3000 a year fees, but he also had a maintenance loan as well and it was a 4 year course.

mo1905 wrote:I agree Eddie, trouble is, what's the answer ? The youth of today have a huge no win dilemma.

The answer is to play them at their own game. Whether this is just or moral is subject to debate. But we live in a dog eat dog world. Our politicians and Capt's of industry play the system, they stretch to the limit what is legal. If you are really big the law makes no difference. But back in the real world, the little guy can do much, but very rarely does anything, other than moan.

Take property or land for instance. The rich hang on to every inch, generation after generation, but the poor throw it away. A working man works all his life to buy some land and a house. He becomes old and goes into an old peoples home. The state orders him to sell his modest investment and until he gets to close to poverty stricken, it takes the lot. This man may have paid big money in taxes all his life, but when he needs some help and pay back, it's f**k you. Of course if the man had no property or wealth, because he had legally given away his wealth to his family years before, the state will will pick up the bill. Remember this guy is not a scrounger, he has paid hundreds of thousand of pounds into the system. Are you getting my drift. Less is very often more.

I understand it makes sense to hand over your assets now before it's too late but sadly, many of our youth won't have that problem. Many are now just accepting they will be renting property rather than buying. You have to time the property give away thing too. A friend of mine was gifted his fathers property but ended up owing many £1000's in tax. I can't remember exact details but if you die within 6 years of gifting, lots of back taxes are due.
It's a tough gig for sure and still doesn't address the student fees issue. My boy was also fortunate to pay £3K in fees but living in central London, racked up huge debt.