NHS plan to share GP patient data in England delayed to September
Plans to allow an NHS system to extract patient data from doctors’ surgeries in England have been delayed amid concerns around privacy.
Jo Churchill, the public health minister, said the data programme would still go ahead this year. The coming weeks would see the plan “strengthened” and work undertaken to “ensure that data is accessed securely”, she said.
The UK information commissioner welcomed the delay to the launch. Elizabeth Denham said there remained “considerable confusion regarding the scope and nature” of the programme.
The scheme will collect information on people’s treatments, referrals and appointments over the past 10 years, alongside other data from medical records held on GPs’ systems. The collected data is coded by NHS Digital to protect patient identities.
Churchill told the House of Commons: “Data saves lives, it’s as simple as that. We’ve seen that in the pandemic, it’s one of the lessons of the vaccine rollout.
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