[GLLUG] the care data / nhs farkage

[Sharon Kimble]

On Tue, 04 Mar 2014 19:29:55 +0000
Karanbir Singh <mail-lists at karan.org> wrote:

> hi,
> 
> As of earlier in the day today I've started receiving very specific
> spam about a very corner case medical issue that I have. Am told that
> only a 'few' people in the UK have this condition, so its certainly
> not the sort of thing that mass spammers will target.
> 
> While there are a couple of other agencies that also have 'some'
> details, given the recent news about the care data being on public
> services etc I am very concerned about who all might have acces /
> might have-had access. And its not clear from generic news reporting
> if there was really a compromise or not ( also definition of 'public'
> seems to vary depending on what media source is being read at the
> time ).
> 
> Does anyone know, even if backed by anecdotal evidence, if this data
> was indeed made public, by design or otherwise ?
> 
> - KB
> 
Browsing the web the other night whilst in bed I came across this,
which was sufficiently interesting for me to take a copy.
=============================================
Fury as NHS patient data uploaded to Google servers outside the UK

4th Mar 2014 | 00:44

The controversy over the handling of the computerised NHS patient
records has grown more intense as it emerged a huge database had been
uploaded to Google servers located outside the UK.

Tory MP Sarah Wollaston, a former family doctor, has questioned how and
why the entire HES (hospital episode statistics) database for England
how it was handed over to management firm PA Consulting.

She tweeted: "So HES [hospital episode statistics] data uploaded to
'google's immense army of servers', who consented to that?"

The Guardian reports how PA Consulting, a private firm, had uploaded 27
DVDs worth of data over the course of two weeks and used Google Maps to
create an interactive, searchable tool.

Start-to-finish

The company said it had obtained the "entire start-to-finish HES
dataset across all three areas of collection – inpatient, outpatient
and A&E.

"Within two weeks of starting to use the Google tools we were able to
produce interactive maps directly from HES queries in seconds," it
added.

The use of Google Maps is sure to cause a storm and further privacy
fears over the use and storage of this data and the issue of exactly
who has access to it.

A separate report in the Independent on Monday revealed anonymous
patent data had been "used by a marketing consultancy to advise clients
on targeting their social media campaigns."

[source - TechRadar]
=================================================

Does it help? Or was this one of the original articles that you alluded
too?

Sharon.
-- 
A taste of linux = http://www.sharons.org.uk
my git repo = https://bitbucket.org/boudiccas/dots
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