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Apologies Anon 12:37 but I think that "pseudonymisation" is possibly one of the most flawed and potentially dangerous concepts that the NHS has ever come up.

Because of the complexity of its implementation, many people have skirted around it by using things like the "Hospital Number". This is not a unique identifier and the same number can be potentially be issued to many difference patients with disastrous consequences.

The NHS Number is a unique identifier that can be used safely to link data together without revealing a patient's actual identity.

After all, if you left a piece of paper with your NHS number without any other identifying detail on a train no-one would be any the wiser as to whom it referred.