British NHS Patient Records Go To the Cloud

smitty777 writes "The Telegraph is reporting on an effort by the NHS to put a London hospital's patient records in the cloud. One of the more interesting aspects of this is the suggestion that patients would have control over who has access to their medical data. Many have understandable security concerns, which are even more relevant considering the recent issues with Dropbox cloud storage."

Comments

It's only a matter of time

[frosty03]

It's only a matter of time before somebody gets into it...

Re:It's only a matter of time

[rainmouse]

Yes, because the government getting involved in anything always makes it more efficient and affordable.

Regardless of the benefits, try telling that to someone who's been denied health coverage because of a "pre-exisitng" condition and who makes too much money for Medicaid and is too young for Medicare.

Doesn't happen. This is about the British NHS and its all free. Same goes for the other patient financial concerns in your post. If its all about insurance woes and being over charged then its all completely irrelevant. Doctors having access to your medical history, knowing your blood type, allergies and what medication you are on etc in a matter of seconds is very useful to doctors and patients alike assuming the information is not leaked or corrupted somehow. People may whine and complain the usual anti government stuff but this could actually save lives.

On a side note, I (and just about everyone else in Europe) really have trouble understanding why so many Americans are against free health care. I've heard a few, very angrily voice reasons that seemed based upon some very flawed or dishonest information. I take it the powers that be have a lot to financially to gain from manipulating people into hating the idea of getting stuff for free and forcing them to rely on insurances companies who make it their purpose to find reasons not to pay out.

Good

[mr1911]

The failure of the London experiment may keep entities in the U.S. from trying the same thing.

Re:Good

[tripleevenfall]

Since when does the failure of omnigovernment policies in one place or time dissuade people from wanting to try those things again?

Re:Good

[baldass_newbie]

The failure of the London experiment may keep entities in the U.S. from trying the same thing.

If the failure of the Soviet, Chinese, North Vietnamese, North Koreans, Cambodians, National Socialists and Fascists didn't teach the US government anything, I fail to see how the British NHS will.

"in the cloud"

[Zouden]

What's wrong with simply saying "online"? They're putting the patient records online. Medical staff will be able to access them through the internet.

Alright, now I'll hit the submit button and send this text to the cloud!

Nonsense

[Spad]

Clinical software providers have been pushing this style of system for months now, it's hardly a "cutting edge pilot scheme"; EMIS & SystmOne are probably the furthest ahead with a lot of GP practices already using their hosted solutions for their patient records (in the case of EMIS with a caching server locally in case their link goes down).

Doctors get R/W access over N3 (The NHS "private" network, similar to JANET) and doctors & patients can get read access over the internet if they want to.

It's not "in the cloud" or "let's upload all our patient records to Rapidshare", it's a fucking hosted software solution, running out of a datacentre (in Leeds, in EMIS' case) on some servers, just like any other.

Re:Imagine the joy of NHS patients

[dugeen]

How lucky you are to live in the US where you have the freedom to pay up, or push off and die of untreated disease.