Health records privacy risk is clear

Friday, February 26, 2010

A security expert has supported moves by London GPs to warn the public of the dangers of having an electronic health record.

Ross Anderson, a professor of security engineering at Cambridge University, has written a blog warning that the summary care record (SCR) has a clear privacy risk and has questionable usefulness.

"Ministers say it will facilitate emergency and unscheduled care, but the evidence in favour of such systems is slight. It won't be available abroad (or even in Scotland) so if you are allergic to penicillin you'd better keep on wearing your dogtag. But the privacy risk is clear; a similar system in Scotland was quickly abused," he said.

Anderson praised efforts by London's local medical committees, who have produced a poster and opt-out leaflet for doctors to display in their waiting rooms.

The academic complained that the SCR has become political, with Labour backing it and the Tories and Liberal Democrats against it.

"Its roll-out means that millions of leaflets will be distributed to voters, pardon me, patients in London extolling its virtues. A cynic might ask whether this is a suitable use of public funds during an election campaign," he added.

Working alongside others, Anderson has criticised the summary care record (SCR) before in a report called Database State.

In response, a Department of Health spokesman said: "Patients have at least twelve weeks to decide if they want to have a Summary Care Record and, together with GPs, have had several sources of information on how the records work and the opt-out process made available to them. All patients have the right to opt out and they can also change their minds at any time."

He added that as of 19 February there were almost 1.2 million SCRs created and over 600,000 patients had been written to as part of a public information programme. The opt-out rate is said to remain consistently below 1 per cent.