Care.data will ‘reduce flow of confidential data around NHS’

Mark Davies made the comments during a media briefing to promote NHS England’s plans for a £2m national awareness campaign about the care.data project which will link patient data across different care settings.

It was revealed yesterday that the first data extractions would take place in March.

The project has sparked concerns about patient records being accessed by third parties, such as drug companies, but Dr Davies said that although it would increase the flow of pseudonymised data it would reduce the flow of patient identifiable data.

He said this would be “a significant change for the NHS and for social care but something [with which] we think the public and patients will feel more comfortable”.

“I think there will be less flows of patient identifiable data because of this,” Dr Davies added.

“One of the core purposes of the HSCIC as the unified collection point and a single authorised safe haven is to reduce the flow of confidential data around the system and ensure we have effective flows of de-identified data flowing around the system.” 

When asked by HSJ if commissioners would be able to gain access to patient identifiable data, NHS England director of patients and information Tim Kelsey replied what it would not happen under care.data.

Mr Kelsey added: “Identifiable data will not flow to third parties unless [there is] either a parliamentary exemption or it’s the patient themselves [who tries to access it].”

The awareness campaign and a delay to when patient data will be extracted for the database follows an intervention by the Information Commissioner’s Office, as exclusively revealed by HSJ last month.

Data extractions are now scheduled to begin in March 2014 instead of this autumn, as previous stated in NHS England guidance, allowing GPs more time to comply with a legal duty to fully notify patients about the programme.   

The campaign will include A5 size leaflets being sent to every household in England, costing £1m, in January, although they will not be addressed to a specific householder or be sent in an envelope. 

It will also include regional and social media publicity. However, television and radio advertising were ruled out on “cost effectiveness” grounds.

An NHS spokeswoman said the principle was that data extractions would begin about eight weeks after the first leaflet drop and would take place “around March”. 

Dr Davies said there would be “no pilot” exercise before the national go-live in March.

Dr Davies added: “We have not really talked about the operational detail, the technical aspects, about how we will do the extraction.

“We may well take a subset initially and work our way through but in no way would I describe that as a pilot. That’s just a sensible operational technical delivery as a large scale programme.”

An NHS England spokeswoman clarified not every practice would be involved from the outset although it remains unclear how practices will be selected and how quickly the information centre can collect data universally.

The information commissioner’s office welcomed the news that NHS England would now be conducting the awareness campaign and said it would continue to advise NHS England, GPs and the other relevant bodies about the importance of ensuring patients fully understand the options available to them.

An ICO statement said: “It is a fundamental principle of the Data Protection Act that people are aware of how organisations may use or disclose their personal information.

“We expect all of the organisations involved to use the time between now and the spring to make sure patients are aware of these changes, how their information will be used and how they can object to this if they wish to do so.”