Will the proposed centralised database of peoples medical records (The Spine) compromise patient confidentiality?
Dr Cancer Doctors do their best to maintain patient confidentiality. The database raises the obvious concerns about hackers and viruses. Overall, though, the centralisation of patient data can only be advantageous, as any patient who transfers from one hospital to another can tell you. Dr Child There are inevitably concerns but the notion of making medical records electronic is eminently sensible. The amount of time wasted at the moment in trying to find notes is ridiculous. It’s like when banks had paper ledgers for each customer account, and you could only withdraw money from your own branch. There are big questions about who will be allowed to access this data. Certainly for legitimate medical use it will be a huge advantage. Inevitably, however, with the need for coding, invoicing and data analysis, lots of access will be for non-medical reasons and this will need to be tightly controlled.
