Image: Yuri Samoilov/Flickr, CCBY licence.
If you happen to visit your doctor in the next few weeks, you may (or may not) spot a new poster or leaflet; they are NHS blue, with a yellow stripe at the bottom, headlined “Your Data Matters to the NHS”. Like all those e-mails you’ve been receiving asking you to opt in to receiving marketing, the poster and leaflet has been prompted by GDPR – but it’s about something rather different, and the choice you are being offered is an opt out, not an opt in.
Simply put, if you have concerns about what’s being done with your medical records – who is getting access to them, and how are they being used – you have the right to opt out of uses of your own health information for purposes beyond your individual care.
