Do you care who knows about your health records? About what pills you’ve taken, what diseases you’ve caught, what treatment you’ve had? If you don’t, you can stop reading now. If you do, you’ve got a fight ahead.
Today the British government published a draft strategy, ‘Data Saves Lives: Reshaping Health and Social Care with Data’. Health secretary Matt Hancock graced the airwaves to underline the message that NHS data would save lives – and that we, the patients, would be in “control”.
But a close look at what the government has been saying and doing over the last couple of weeks suggests that isn’t really true. Hancock and his lieutenants have been busy telling us that the plan is all about saving lives – though it isn’t – while giving themselves the right to share our data with pretty much whoever they want and fudging our legal protections.
