"Creating a truly privatised NHS requires both investment in the latest apps and wearables, alongside a rigorous security policy to give patients and healthcare professionals complete assurance that their data is sold for its full market value".
NHS health apps project plan: Powered by your medical records
UK health secretary Jeremy Hunt plans for NHS-approved health apps to play a role in patient records and healthcare have already spawned a rash of privacy concerns. The NHS.UK site will have a new collection of NHS-approved health apps to guide patient choice. Data from health apps and wearable activity trackers such as …
COMMENTS
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Friday 9th September 2016 12:42 GMT TitterYeNot
Re: Sigh...
"Dear Mr Ffrynt-Botham"
Yes, our dear Mr Hunt the Cealth Secretary.
As part of his remit, he once oversaw a research study on a drug that greatly enlarged the human male glans penis, chiefly to establish whether or not it increased sexual pleasure for men, women or both.
After much analysis his conclusion was that it stopped his hand slipping off the end...
<Coughs>
Old joke I know, but it does seem that life does actually imitate art sometimes...
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Friday 9th September 2016 13:05 GMT Skoorb
They are announcing something they have been doing for years
This is a non announcement.
It works exactly as everything already works (or has worked in one case where functionality was pulled last year).
If you find your GP on nhs.uk today you will see a link under Online Facilities. If you click this link it takes you to your GP's system supplier to log in. Have a look at an example.
The online symptom checker has existed for around a decade, but was integrated into NHS Direct - based on your answers it scheduled a nurse callback at an appropriate urgency. When 111 was introduced all this integration fell apart, as 111 is commisioned on a local basis. As a result, the online symptom checker was pulled.
Allowing things like fitbits to push data into your record depends entirely on the GP system suppliers develpping this functionality. Fortunately, this has been avaliable since 2014. Nice to see that the minister has finally got around to reading the press release.
Sounds like this announcement is them saying that they are going to make the log in to online services button bigger and dust off all the old symptom checker code.
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Friday 9th September 2016 11:49 GMT Dr Who
There is no security issue
Because it is not going to happen. Many billions will be spent. Many IT services companies will come and go. Fuck all will be achieved. There is therefore no security implication.
The electronic patient record has been in the making for over 20 years. According to this article it will now be available by the end of 2017. Bollocks will it be.
The NHS will never learn that grand, centralised, monolithic schemes will never work and they will continue to waste our hard earned dosh with the behemoths of the IT industry.
The internet is not a centrally designed thing, which is why it works. It's a set of protocols to which anyone who wants to build an internetty thing must adhere. That's the route the NHS should be taking.
Britain clearly has an almost religious attachment to the NHS, and Jeremy Cunt is not helping things. I think that attachment is wrong. The state should guarantee each and every citizen their healthcare through a state funded insurance scheme. Almost certainly however, the provision of healthcare and its satellite services would be done better by multiple, competing, well regulated private organisations. We have world class medical professionals being managed by an organisation of world class waste and incompetence. This has to change.
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Friday 9th September 2016 14:35 GMT Dr Who
Re: There is no security issue
We are all blinded by dogma and nostalgia. The health service in the UK needs more money - a lot more money. We need more doctors and nurses and we need to pay them more. We will need a lot more geriatric and other age related facilities.
What Tony Blair proved is that chucking loads of money at the NHS as it stands is tantamount to chucking it into a black hole. It disappears and nothing improves. Something has to change and an urgent and honest national debate is needed about how to dismantle the current dysfunctional system and build one that can handle the epic healthcare challenges facing us over the next few decades.
One thing is absolutely certain, the NHS as it stands is an outdated, inadequate and inappropriate vehicle for delivering health services in the UK for the 21st century. Let's get over our ideological hangups and have a serious attempt at tackling the problem. If we don't, chaos and disaster in our healthcare system are guaranteed.
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Friday 9th September 2016 19:13 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: There is no security issue
"One thing is absolutely certain, the NHS as it stands is an outdated, inadequate and inappropriate vehicle for delivering health services in the UK for the 21st century. "
Got it in one. Healthcare was nationalised by Labour in 1948 along with a whole host of other industries (railways, road haulage, coal mining, steel manufacture, electricity supply, water supply, gas supply, etc, etc) All the other industries proved much more quickly that 1948 Socialist dogma was no way to run an industry, and promptly fell apart. Does anyone remember what happened to British Road Services? Once upon a time they had the monopoly of all road haulage over 50 miles. They ended their days as the vehicle leasing brand name of Volvo Truck and Bus!
It really is about time we understood that a 1948 solution will not meet 2016 needs, and designed a 2016 solution!
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Friday 9th September 2016 23:55 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: There is no security issue
Good grief, you know how to make friends judging by your DVs. Given your handle I would guess that you might have some inside knowledge on how the NHS operates.
My (as in mine) company bought a NHS building, it was a clinic and an admin centre - we have turned it into an IT company HQ. The level of maintenance was absolutely shocking. The boiler was a coal fired thing that had been converted to run on gas oil - horribly inefficient. We have recently replaced it with a modern oil fired boiler for a few 1000 quid and payback will be in about six years in oil savings and using cheaper oil. The windows were all wooden sash and the external doors all "leaked" cold badly, again a few 1000 quid replaced them with similar looking PVC double glazed units, again payback in a few years in savings. Each desk had a private BT exchange line - WTF???! It took me two days stripping out the wiring. There were also a couple of ISDN Bs. We have a PBX, in a VM.
OK so this is an anecdote and not data but I have seen similar horrors in the main hospital. I have spent quite a lot of time in there due to various broken family members and keep my eyes open.
Waste, waste and more waste ....
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Sunday 11th September 2016 09:44 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: There is no security issue
Exactly. They've never heard of lean (and the seven wastes), even after decades of supposed efficiency savings.
Rumour has it the reason ward temperatures are so high in the main Plymouth hospital isn't for the patients benefit, it's because they don't think the boiler would restart if they turned it off :/
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Sunday 11th September 2016 11:18 GMT dajames
Re: There is no security issue
The boiler was a coal fired thing that had been converted to run on gas oil - horribly inefficient. We have recently replaced it with a modern oil fired boiler for a few 1000 quid and payback will be in about six years in oil savings and using cheaper oil.
Blame accountants. It's always easier to justify continued expenditure on "necessary" consumables than it is to get approval for even the smallest of capital expenditures, no matter how much money can be saved or how quickly.
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Tuesday 13th September 2016 20:05 GMT JEDIDIAH
Re: There is no security issue
Spot on. Everyone loves a handout but no one likes to pay.
Americas public healthcare options suffer from the same problem. Everyone is stingy and everyone has a different excuse for not properly funding things. The problem with the government being in charge of things is not the inherent problems with large systems or civil servants. It's the fact that someone will always want to cut the budget.
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Tuesday 13th September 2016 12:47 GMT annodomini2
Re: There is no security issue
Prior to the current shambles the NHS was reasonably well funded and generally very effective, albeit not perfect.
From my perspective as I wasn't paying at point of use it was very effective for me.
Now roll in the Tories and their "We have no plans to modify the NHS" and proceed to perform the biggest top down reshuffle since the NHS was founded.
Removing all the political power at the top of the structure.
They also then pushed all the nurses and other essential staff to outsourcing companies, by stating that you cannot have a pay rise.
And subsequently nosed dived the economy, forcing inflation sky high (they needed the push don't you know), with "Austerity(TM)" (i.e. Take from the poor and give to the rich).
Which put additional squeeze on NHS budgets from below and above, with no more money coming in from the top and rising costs from below (private contracts and huge outsourcing wage bill).
They are attempting to do the same with Junior doctors and this so called "7-day contract".
This is all aimed at running the NHS into the ground, to justify pushing it into private hands (flogging it off cheap of course).
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Tuesday 1st November 2016 21:50 GMT Commonsense999
Re: There is no security issue
Almost all the required components of the NHS system we've paid so much to develop and waited so long for are already in Ebay, public and private data, picture storage, archival functions, multi-national language and access routs, security, massive capacity etc etc. I would have negotiated the contract with ebay's developers if I was running the NHS.
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Friday 9th September 2016 12:00 GMT Anonymous Coward
The health secretary commented...
At a time of increasing queues for operations, the junior doctor's contract renewal, a 'transition' to a 7 days NHS, woeful mental health care provision and delays at A&E, I've decided 'fuck that' lets spend the cash on some shiny gimmicks.
This idiot is a typical Torrie 1ZPGSuPHJzUZNQpJetSEbmtz2TxRSkGOg2JQ6R4hqlhsOezO3RBFDK9BHnMx297SaJjz1ZyNXTLm7.
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Friday 9th September 2016 12:41 GMT Anonymous Coward
"The relaunched NHS Choices website will allow patients to book appointments, views medical records and order prescriptions as part of longs standing and delayed plans to move towards a paperless NHS."
Err, I can do that already at my surgery, although I haven't signed up for the medical records option.
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Wednesday 14th September 2016 10:08 GMT Anonymous Coward
Termination App
In the interests of joined up government this will be linked to the HMRC tax and immigration records and the political donations records and the reality TV and Youtube popularity indices and will provide a lethal shock when the app decides you are no longer of use to our ruling masters.
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Friday 16th September 2016 05:19 GMT Anonymous Coward
Could <> should
IMHO the biggest problem is in getting people to stop thinking 'can we do this? Yes? Great, let's do it!' when it come sto IT, and instead get them thinking 'Can we do this? How well can we do it? Given how well we can do it currently, should we even try?'.
Given an internet designed for robustness rather than security, a general populace whose grasp of IT even after three decades or so of widespread availability is still slight, and politicians being fairly average members of the general populace in that regard - given all that, is it any wonder that we're seeing so many massive privacy-related problems and failing government IT projects?
Yes, yes we could have health monitors availabel for everyone all plumbed straight into an NHS database. But should we? Nope, no way, given the circumstances.