Northerner
Admin (Retired)
- Relationship to Diabetes
- Type 1
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.
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/jan/19/nhs-patient-data-available-companies-buy
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.
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/jan/19/nhs-patient-data-available-companies-buy