Patients to be able to veto spine uploads

Health minister Lord Warner yesterday announced a significant u-turn in government policy on patient's details being automatically loaded onto the NHS spine summary care record, stating that patients will now have the right to request their details not be uploaded.

Lord Warner announced the concession at a press conference yesterday to announce the publication of the ministerial task force on summary care records. Although it is unclear how such a compromise would work technically it does mark a step towards a potentially workable system.

According to the Guardian, Lord Warner said of patients concerned about their details being uploaded to the spine: "For all of them, if they don't want to have their information uploaded they can stop it before it is uploaded."

Warner was reported to say that a veto was offered to people in Scotland before the NHS began uploading a similar "emergency care summary", though only 250 out of 6m people opted out.

The first uploads of patient demographic details to the spine record have already occured, with NHS staff now able to use the national system to look up patient's non-medical details. This is the first national component of the planned systems of national summary records and detailed clinical records, which together form the Care Records Service meant to be implemented by 2010.

Until yesterday official government policy had been that automatic uploads of patient's details would happen automatically from GP systems, but patients could thereafter request that their details not be made electronically available on the SCR system to other NHS staff.

Last month the DH wrote to about 1300 patients who had requested to not have their details recorded onto the SCR system rejecting their request and stating they would have to demonstrate to the government, rather than their clinician, that uploading their details would cause them "considerable mental distress".

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Opt-out consent model to be kept for SCR