|
· ICM finding released at campaign launch
· Leaked report reveals safeguard problems
David Leigh and Rob Evans
Thursday November 30, 2006
A national campaign was launched last night to persuade people to refuse on privacy grounds to have their medical records uploaded to a national database. Guy Herbert, of the No2ID group, which is also campaigning against the introduction of identity cards, said: "We'd like to get up to a million people to contact their GPs."
The campaigners, who are part-financed by the charitable Joseph Rowntree trust, released ICM poll findings commissioned by the trust which they said showed a majority of the population was hostile to Whitehall's plans.
The figures show 53% of those questioned were either "strongly opposed" or "tended to oppose" the centrepiece of the Department of Health's £12bn NHS computerisation scheme. These results follow a Medix poll of doctors earlier this month, which found that 52% of GPs were not prepared to upload their clinical records to the so-called national Spine without each patient's consent.
Ross Anderson, professor of security engineering at Cambridge, and one of the campaigners, said: "The NHS database starts off with 53% of patients opposed. The opposition can only get stronger once the public realise what NHS administrators plan to do."
continues
|
