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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2272166/Big-brother-log-drinking-habits-waist-size.html#axzz2JhXYhdJ3

Big brother to log your drinking habits and waist size as GPs are forced to hand over confidential records

Data includes weight, cholesterol, BMI, family health history and pulse rate
Doctors will be forced to reveal alcohol consumption and smoking status
Privacy campaigners described it as 'biggest data grab in NHS history'
Part of new Health Service programme called Everyone Counts
Officials insisted data will be anonymous and deleted after analysis

GPs are to be forced to hand over confidential records on all their patients’ drinking habits, waist sizes and illnesses.

The files will be stored in a giant information bank that privacy campaigners say represents the ‘biggest data grab in NHS history’.

They warned the move would end patient confidentiality and hand personal information to third parties.
Data grab: Doctors will be forced to hand over sensitive information about patients as part of a new programme called Everyone Counts but campaigners have criticised the move

Data grab: Doctors will be forced to hand over sensitive information about patients as part of a new programme called Everyone Counts but campaigners have criticised the move

The data includes weight, cholesterol levels, body mass index, pulse rate, family health history, alcohol consumption and smoking status.

Diagnosis of everything from cancer to heart disease to mental illness would be covered. Family doctors will have to pass on dates of birth, postcodes and NHS numbers.

Officials insisted the personal information would be made anonymous and deleted after analysis.

But Ross Anderson, professor of security engineering at Cambridge University, said: ‘Under these proposals, medical confidentiality is, in effect, dead and there is currently nobody standing in the way.’ Nick Pickles, of the privacy group Big Brother Watch, said NHS managers would now be in charge of our most confidential information.

He added: ‘It is unbelievable how little the public is being told about what is going on, while GPs are being strong-armed into handing over details about their patients and to not make a fuss.

‘Not only have the public not been told what is going on, none of us has been asked to give our permission for this to happen.’

The data grab is part of Everyone Counts, a programme to extend the availability of patient data across the Health Service.
They warned the move would end patient confidentiality and hand personal information to third parties

Campaigners for privacy: They warn the move would end patient confidentiality and hand personal information to third parties

GPs will be required to send monthly updates on their patients to a central database run by the NHS’s Health and Social Care Information Centre.

Health chiefs will be able to demand information on every patient, such as why they have been referred to a consultant. Another arm of the NHS will supply data on patient prescriptions.

In a briefing for GPs, health chiefs admit that ‘patient identifiable components’ will be demanded, including post code and date of birth.

NHS officials insist the information centre will be a ‘safe haven’ for personal data, which will be deleted soon after it is received.

The information will be used to analyse demand for services and improve treatment.

But a document outlining the scheme even raises the prospect of clinical data being passed on or sold to third parties.

It states: ‘The patient identifiable components will not be released outside the safe haven except as permitted by the Data Protection Act.

‘HSCIC ... will store the data and link it only where approved and necessary, ensuring that patient confidentiality is protected.’
The data collected includes pulse rate, weight, cholesterol levels, body mass index, family health history, alcohol consumption and smoking status

Personal: The data collected includes pulse rate, weight, cholesterol levels, body mass index, family health history, alcohol and smoking status

Patients will not be able to opt out of the system.

Before the election the Tories condemned the creation of huge databases – including the controversial NHS IT project – and insisted it would roll back ‘Labour’s database state’.

But last month, in the first sign of a dramatic shift away from this position, Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt said he wanted millions of private medical records to be stored and shared between hospitals, GPs, care homes and even local councils. He sold the programme as part of plans for a ‘paperless NHS’ by 2018 and claimed ‘thousands of lives’ would be saved.

But details of the changes have raised serious concerns among civil liberties and privacy campaigners, as well as health professionals

Last night GPs’ leaders said the latest proposals were too broad.

‘Patients must be given the option to opt out of any scheme that seeks to transfer identifiable information about them from their records to another source,’ said a BMA spokesman.

‘This opt-out should be widely advertised and explained in order that patients are reassured and understand the process being carried out.’

Phil Booth of the campaign group NO2ID said an unprecedented volume of data would be ‘sucked up’.

‘People have to trust in the notion of medical confidentiality. They expect to be able to talk in confidence to their GP,’ he said.

‘They don’t expect their private conversations to be uploaded on to a national database where they will be made available for any number of purposes for the benefit of persons unknown.’

A spokesman for the NHS said last night: ‘The NHS constitution makes clear what information can be used for by the NHS and this proposal complies exactly with that.’


No Cheers,

RR
 
Gumball":ukrh6maa said:
Daily Mail. :x

Caveat Emptor!
I have to agree with that.

But just to confuse issues how about the EU giving subsidies to grow tobacco?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/telegraph-view/9844515/More-of-our-money-going-up-in-smoke.html

So we should not smoke but our taxes should be used to pay farmers to grow tobacco! There is a fantastic line in the story -

"It is possible that the MEPs who voted in favour of the amendment were not fully aware of what they were doing. "

I think that sums it up beautifully.
 
chris":di7m21m0 said:
Gumball":di7m21m0 said:
Daily Mail. :x

Caveat Emptor!
I have to agree with that.

But just to confuse issues how about the EU giving subsidies to grow tobacco?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/telegraph-view/9844515/More-of-our-money-going-up-in-smoke.html

So we should not smoke but our taxes should be used to pay farmers to grow tobacco! There is a fantastic line in the story -

"It is possible that the MEPs who voted in favour of the amendment were not fully aware of what they were doing. "

I think that sums it up beautifully.
Holy dumb. Not you :lol: the concept and execution of such a plan... :scratch: *sigh* Who the hell lets these people make decisions? Oh wait... hmm.... awk-waaaarrrdd.... :p (we're just as bad, all joking aside)...

8)
 
So ends Patient trust in Doctors, they barely retained our respect prior to this, it doesn't surprise me one bit, the UK has been going to crap for a long time!
 
...funny, some in the US use the UK as a prime template as to how-things-should-be...

...not only could the questionable natural progression of a nation be used as inspiration, it could cause even further difficulty for someplace else when applied unnaturally.

Like how it was a great idea to introduce cane toads to Australia to control beetles eating sugar cane. People looooove muckin' with stuff. It's almost like problems are created for the sake of solving them...but that's another matter. :)

8)
the jobmaker
 
Kyle Weiss":2b5t5wr8 said:
...funny, some in the US use the UK as a prime template as to how-things-should-be...
There's a recipe for disaster right there, and no, I'm not joking, this Country is getting way too depressing. :(
 
Someone's makin' out big, or planning on it, else why would they do it? :lol: I feel bad for you guys. I really do. I would do something about it, but I have enough of a mammoth carcass to consider in my own back yard. :lol:
 
In general Kyle, the people here are pretty apathetic, in my younger years I was a serious activist, I attended many many rallies and demonstrations to try to effect change here, it's a waste of time, our Politicians wont hear our voices and the people wont stand united, our Government walk all over us because our spirits have been destroyed through years of political abuse and denial, I don't know why we even bother with Elections any more, the people don't vote in the interests of the Country here, it's all become ME-ME-ME-ME, if it weren't so pathetically tragic and depressing it would be funny.
 
Which is why I laugh at rallies and protests in general, especially when all it does is turn into a big excuse to party (very common these days).

I stick to bettering myself and my life however reasonably I can, keep my wits about me (a challenge in itself) and just thank my lucky stars I'm not having kids to show us what a great job we've all done as a species (and spare the poor bastard any genetic anomalies I could give to him/her). That's just my method, though.

Changing a changing world is beyond my doing, so I just being/doing more of what I'd more like to see in the world. It ain't fast or revolutionary, but I sleep better at night.

8)
 
Kyle Weiss":q9p4wt0u said:
Which is why I laugh at rallies and protests in general, especially when all it does is turn into a big excuse to party (very common these days).
Emma Goldman loved a party :D

 
On the ops topic, I see the advantage of having broad statistical data available as being useful to medical professionals. However, any statistics can be twisted to make any point viable (my favorite from a college courese was "cities with more churches have more alcoholics" because cities with more churches have higher populations thus more people with EVERY afflicton: the stat neither establishes causality nor adresses proportions).

The big "IF" to me here isn't anonymity, but how the information will be used. I don't see the government knocking on peoples doors and taking this cigarettes and whisky away from them. As it applies to our forum, I give you an example from my family history: my grandmother smoked for several years but quit well before I was born. She was diagnosed with emphasyma later in life. "Smoking causes this" Well her medical records don't show that she grew up downwind from a lead smelt and lived near a cement factory for years. Causality between her smoking and her lung condition is far from certain.
 
My quick 5 minute google research grbbed some quick numbers for a little positing:

160,000 lung cancer deaths each year, 25k who were never smokers. Of the 135,000 remaining, how many were brought up in bad neighborhoods with industrial pollution or exposed to radon in the home? Noone has these numbers because you can't look these numbers up because the docs just write smoking as the cause. Without establishing causality, the cdc and ama and american cancer society have not done due dilligence.
 
Well, eventually it'll be illegal to go outside or open your home's windows, if the trend is to be going that direction. That is, until they figure out how to shut down all emissions from...well, everything from brick-fired pizza ovens to factories. Has anyone, ever, in their lifetime, driven or ridden in a car with the windows down (or had the recirculation feature turned off)? Oops. :lol:

Even if industrial pollution ceases, I'd bet lung cancer cases stay the same. So, then it's the fault of the peat-smoking scotch manufacturers, cars and pizza ovens. Then those will go away.

You do realize the point is to live in naturally-formed caves, eat nothing but rocks, breathe somehow filtered with entropic systems of filtered air, never to move or do anything, for your actions will cause a problem, and your actions also will expose and put you at risk. :lol: Obstruction legislation loves this process, so long as there's something left to obstruct...and they can care for you better than you can.
 
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