Radical plans to transform NHS drawn up at drug firms and No 10 roundtable

[Northerner]

A list of radical ideas for transforming the NHS, including lifting safeguards blocking startups’ access to patient data, and nurses being incentivised to help speed trials, was privately drawn up by drug and healthcare companies in talks with senior No 10 advisers.

The proposals, which can be revealed after a freedom of information request, emerged in private roundtables convened by a taskforce appointed by Boris Johnson to generate ideas for cutting supposed red tape after Brexit.

But campaigners for transparency and patient confidentiality expressed concern that the suggestions, which included criticism of what was described as “false protectors of patient interests”, could lower standards and weaken patient protections if implemented.

The ideas emerged in a “pharma round table” attended by representatives of companies including GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, drug firm lobbyists and figures including Johnson’s chief health adviser, William Warr, and at another for digital health.

Radical plans to transform NHS drawn up at drug firms and No 10 roundtable

Exclusive: ideas include reducing trial safeguards and allowing startups to harvest patient data

www.theguardian.com

 

[Sharron1]

Here we go. Misson creep

 

[IrvineHimself]

With over 75 years worth of good quality data, the NHS has the most comprehensive health dataset in the world. Big Tech and Pharma have been salivating at the prospect of getting their grubby little paws on it for years. As I recall, it was only a couple of years ago that another scheme by the Tories to sell it off on the cheap was quite rightly scuppered by the adverse public reaction.

On a similar note, I remember an early Google service for international travellers where Goggle would, very kindly, store my health data in the cloud for free. Nice idea, but without cast iron privacy protections, most people felt the same way I did: "Not a chance in hell!". The service was quietly dropped after only a few years.

Don't get me wrong, I see real benefits to allowing them access to my data. But:

• It should not be sold off cheaply, nor should it be patentable.
• There should be both domestic and international recognition that we, as individuals, have an absolutely inviolable, fundamental right to privacy. And I do not mean the weak and wish washy Article 8 of the ECHR, or the apparently even weaker Due Process Clause of the US constitution