Boots, Tesco and Superdrug to get access to NHS medical records!

Health officials have drawn up plans to send sensitive data from GP surgeries to pharmacies across the country, starting this autumn, without considering the views of patients.

NHS England says the scheme will ease pressures on family doctors, and improve the care given to patients in the High Street.
But campaigners fear major commercial chains will be able to exploit the valuable data, and use it to push the sales of their products.

Officials have now ordered the national rollout of the scheme, on the basis of an evaluation of pilots in 140 pharmacies which they say showed “significant benefits”.

But the official report, seen by The Daily Telegraph, shows that the research garnered responses from just 15 patients – a sample so small that their views were discarded from the research.

The scheme got the green light, after the pharmacists involved in the pilots gave it their backing.

Privacy campaigners described the revelations as “extraordinary”. They said the scheme could leave the public exposed to heavy marketing tactics, from firms with inside information about their health.

Phil Booth, from campaign group medConfidential, said the valuable data would prove “irresistible” to the commercial firms which could exploit it.

“This approach to medical confidentiality is corroding trust in the NHS,” he said.

Full story here http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/11790711/Boots-Tesco-and-Superdrug-to-get-access-to-NHS-medical-records.html

So there we have it. A bunch of greedy, skulduggerous and lying bastards like Tesco will have access to our medical records, ain't life grand. This is in a world where peoples highly private and confidential information is being hacked on an almost daily basis. The future is not bright, the future is grim. Maybe it is time for us all to get off the grid, it can be done, but is not easy.

Unbelievable - except that nothing is sacred anymore. Absolutely everything has a price tag. My BIL who is Norwegian (though living in Australia and keeps up to date with news there) said decisions about who gets to die first, who is most expendable, is becoming a commonplace discussion there.

I just heard an opinion on BBC TV where the speaker said that if you are taken ill in Tesco then they will have some helpful information to hand.

What if you have passed out? How will they know who you are.

Is the Tesco club card going to become an ID card or is another one going to be issued.

The whole thing is just plain crazy. Is it to stop us suing doctors when they get things wrong? We can now sue Tesco instead?

Another thought I had while filling up the dishwasher is this. The papers metioned Tesco a lot in this story. Tesco is in bed with DUK.

We're all going to die.

Squire Fulwood wrote:Another thought I had while filling up the dishwasher is this. The papers metioned Tesco a lot in this story. Tesco is in bed with DUK.

We're all going to die.

lol yes. They'll get us one way or another that's for sure. Now I have a mega decision to make - my life or my Clubcard points?

Its no good, I'm going to have to issue a spoiler. I was diagnosed as a type 2 diabetic in Jan 2009 and I had an operation on my piles in Jan 1991. Ok Tesco, do your worst.

When you see an ad like this, be very afraid



Anyone else remember
"I am not a number, I am a FREE MAN!"

I've gone party off grid in that I mainly only use local shops where I know the staff. I can find out what farm my meat came from and probably also the cow's name. Wouldn't set foot in Tescos even if I was starving. Though I suspect the Co-Op is only less bad.

You can send your preparation H to Benenden Hospital because that's where I left 'em.

The Prisoner, of course I remember him.

Monday, 20 January 2014 posted on our blog

NHS patient data to be made available for sale to drug and insurance firms !
Today in The Guardian

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.

Harvested from GP and hospital records, medical data covering the entire population will be uploaded to the repository controlled by a new arms-length NHS information centre, starting in March. Never before has the entire medical history of the nation been digitised and stored in one place.

Advocates say that sharing data will make medical advances easier and ultimately save lives because it will allow researchers to investigate drug side effects or the performance of hospital surgical units by tracking the impact on patients.

But privacy experts warn there will be no way for the public to work out who has their medical records or to what use their data will be put. The extracted information will contain NHS numbers, date of birth, postcode, ethnicity and gender.

More on this story here. http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/jan/19/nhs-patient-data-available-companies-buy

BTW this was said after the horse had bolted, the Government had already sold our information to Insurance companies.

I wonder if we will ever get the opportunity to correct errors in our medical records, as I believe is the case with credit/financial history. There is/has been a grievous error on my medical records, not a matter of opinion or judgement, a simple matter of fact, but one that could have caused extreme embarrassment and upset to some people. In theory, it could still be used to make a judgement about me. Fortunately, I don't care, but it makes me wonder what other total rubbish is being circulated about me.
Sally

I'm as mad as hell about this!! Just for starters I know some of my medical details have already been flogged off-2 and a half years after having my Hartmanns procedure reversal I am still getting regular marketing letters from many different manufacturers trying to flog me a myriad of different colostomy products and each time I open a letter and see such marketing it brings back a lot of bad memories.

Sally wrote:I wonder if we will ever get the opportunity to correct errors in our medical records, as I believe is the case with credit/financial history.  There is/has been a grievous error on my medical records, not a matter of opinion or judgement, a simple matter of fact, but one that could have caused extreme embarrassment and upset to some people.  In theory, it could still be used to make a judgement about me.  Fortunately, I don't care, but it makes me wonder what other total rubbish is being circulated about me.
Sally

When I was pregnant. the midwife asked me why I hadn't told her about my epilepsy, because it was on my records. I hadn't told her because I am not epileptic. The patient in question had the same first name as me, but the surname was totally different. My insurance premiums could be higher and I wouldn't even know about it if that happened now.

This is the world we now live in. Every email every phone call, everywhere we go is being filmed and monitored. Car journeys are logged by cameras, including average speed, time and date. Every single scrap of your life is in someone's computer, very often in a far away country. The most valuable commodity in the world is information. It is a double edged sword, they know everything about us, but we are beginning to know everything about them.

Where will it all end? total and utter control of every human being. The Banks are doing away with cheques, they want to do away with cash. In the UK only 3 - 5% of money is cash, the rest is digital debt on someone's computer. When there is no cash, every penny we earn, every penny we spend, will be monitored. When you control all spending for all people, you control the people, full stop.

Eddie wrote:..... When there is no cash, every penny we earn, every penny we spend, will be monitored. When you control all spending for all people, you control the people, full stop....

lol We agree on this! I wrote something similar in an essay in 1981 which I entitled "Credit cards - towards a cashless society"

If most people knew the truth how money is created from thin air, i.e it never existed EVER! but people get charged interest on mortgages loans etc. there would be a full scale revolution in many countries. It makes the diabetes scandal look like a subject not worth mentioning. The trouble is, very few know, or want to know the truth.

This is how it works in very simple terms, but the fundamentals are exactly how the great fraud and ponzi scheme works. The greatest con ever worked on the general public, and carries on to the present day. Set up by crooks with the blessing of corrupt politicians.

zand wrote:

Sally wrote:I wonder if we will ever get the opportunity to correct errors in our medical records, as I believe is the case with credit/financial history.  There is/has been a grievous error on my medical records, not a matter of opinion or judgement, a simple matter of fact, but one that could have caused extreme embarrassment and upset to some people.  In theory, it could still be used to make a judgement about me.  Fortunately, I don't care, but it makes me wonder what other total rubbish is being circulated about me.
Sally

When I was pregnant. the midwife asked me why I hadn't told her about my epilepsy, because it was on my records.  I hadn't told her because I am not epileptic.  The patient in question had the same first name as me, but the surname was totally different.  My insurance premiums could be higher and I wouldn't even know about it if that happened now.  

When I was so ill with the gallstones that I was hospitalised I was amazed to be banged up in an isolation ward with suspected hepatitis.

YEARS later when I was finally allowed to see my records I discovered the then GP had written that I was a homosexual AND a heroin addict.

Of course if I "claim" this is not true, that just proves I am "in denial".

Since a whole bunch of my records also disappeared I too wonder if they were mixed up with another patient, and somewhere there's a gay junkie who keeps being asked if he is diabetic yet . . .

. . .obviously if I'd known at the time I'd have demanded the GP show the track-marks to my lawyer and sued the clueless bastard for a large sum of money when there weren't any.

There's an apocryphal science fiction story about the guy whose library book was overdue. Since it was "Kidnapped" by R L Stevenson, who was dead, the Court Computer had him charged with kidnapping and murder and executed.

I surf with Firefox fairly well locked down, with NoScript and Ghostery. Increasingly I'm noticing websites that don't work properly unless I enable all sorts of scripts and cookies. After searching Google for things like diabetes or depression you will find targeted ads (if you bother to look/don't block them. I sometimes wonder if the best way to deal with the Surveillance Society isn't to spend some time generating a completely ludicrous "profile" by searching on completely ludicrous combinations. Well the computers won't know that I'm NOT a 90 year old pregnant male with an interest in vintage clocks and a vegan diet, will they?

No the computers won't know at all, they really aren't that clever are they? I love your sense of humour.

My surgery has been passing information on to a research centre, back in 2009 I received a letter from Synexus asking if I would be willing to participate in a diabetes drug trial  and I was on diet only did not need any drugs LC is far better and safer.

They might have paid you money. On the other hand you might have had a heart attack . . .