Healthcare records held in the UK could be shared with the US, as a result of an initiative being promoted by the EU presidency.
The presidency, currently held by Spain, wants to lay the groundwork for a bilateral agreement between the EU and US for sharing digital healthcare data, according to a statement it issued on Thursday.
"The aim is to create a scenario for clinical information exchange and technical interoperability between the project promoted by the Obama administration and the European project," said the presidency in the statement. The Spanish minister of health and social policy, Trinidad Jiménez, met her US counterpart Kathleen Sebelius in Washington last week to push for the agreement.
The US intends to digitise all healthcare records within five years as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act 2009. Several European countries, including Germany and the UK, have pilot projects for electronic healthcare records.
One of the main NHS projects for sharing healthcare records is the nascent Summary Care Records system, designed to be accessed by medical staff across England. The system is part of the National Project for IT (NPfIT), which has had sustained criticism from IT security experts and doctors.
The Department of Health declined to comment on the EU presidency's push, but did say that the NHS technology office is engaged with international standards organisations, such as Health Level 7.
In addition, the NHS's IT body Connecting for Health has links with peers in the US, the department added. These include a collaboration with the College of American Pathologists for the SNOMED initiative, a project to create common machine-processable medical terminology for data sharing.
The European Data Protection Secretariat (EDPS) said that it had taken note of the EU presidency's initiative. It added that any agreement to share data between the EU and the US would have to conform to data protection and privacy laws in Europe and in individual member states.
"This legal framework [for information exchange] will require special safeguards for the protection of sensitive personal data on health and an adequate level of protection in third countries to which personal data are to be transferred," EDPS said. "Any agreement would, under the Lisbon Treaty, be subject to approval by the European Parliament. Any agreement would finally also require a sufficient consensus on e-health among EU member states."
BT, which holds a contract to support Summary Care Records, declined to comment and referred inquiries to the Information Commissioners' Office (ICO). CSC, the other contract holder for the system, did not respond to a request for comment.
Talkback
Can't understand why your journalist turned a story about advancing technology into just another data protection piece.
The whole health application area has been bedevilled since the dawn of the information age by over-stated - imo non-existent - security scares to the extent that while every aspect of our lives has seen massive change from the impact of the web, mobile comms, multi media etc, our health records are still hand written and stored in tatty, falling apart manual folders.
Where we would be in terms of improvements in direct care and our understanding of disease if the red flag carriers and wavers had been given short shrift Heaven only knows.
I started in IT in 1968 and I remember arguing then we had to computerise our health records. Little did I know that 40 years later we wouldn't have done and would, in fact, be repeating the same old arguments still.
God alone knows what the toll in unecessary suffering and avoidable deaths has been in that time. Those that fight against progress in this area need to think very carefully about what they have done.
Instead of red flags how about some blooded shrouds?
I am not convinced the UK NHS can keep medical records safe and secure from prying eyes, especially commercial interests such as drug and insurance companies. So sharing with the other member states of the EU is to be avoided and sharing with the US over which there is no jurisdiction even worse.
As with other sharing, will the USA share their citizen healthcare info with the EU.
You make some interesting points about how sharing of computerised records could make healthcare more efficient.
However, you seem to discount the possible privacy implications of healthcare data-sharing. Healthcare data is some of the most private information you can get about people, and its disclosure can be incredibly damaging to individuals.
It comes down to how efficient the access controls are - and the government has not demonstrated good access controls in the case of the NHS and other public services.