Stealth.

The Party is desperate for patients’ data what they would call dirt that they could acquire to use for their own purposes called profit or dissing individuals. Imagine how and what they could use it for.

To this end it has taken over GPs’ IT systems, a seemingly generous act in that it “relieves” GPs of some of the burden, but left them with crap. They have created a national IT network that is slower than communication between the Apollo space craft and mission control and claimed this is “progress” (profit).

Instead of GPs having their own patients’ records hosted on a practice’s own server or previously in patient records written by GPs they now have huge data banks with many such discs (blade servers) holding the data which can be viewed at the click of a mouse by those with the right (Party) authority.

In the good old days to view one patient’s medical records you would have had to go to that patient’s surgery and request the paper records but now anyone anywhere in the world could hack in and get the information not just on one patient but on thousands. Indeed the NHS IT system allows access to servers from overseas to help with this process.

Of course the Party will claim it is secure and protected by numerous layers of security just like the Pentagon was/is which is why teenagers have been able to hack in over the years and nothing has changed apart from the continual denial of any problem.

The Party even(tually) gave patients the right to opt out of having an electronic record called the Summary Care Record (SCR) which a few did but then they changed the rules so that opting out of the SCR is not the same as opting out of the care.data Party shaft.

This is where the Party in your (its?) best interest allows plundering of your confidential medical records for Party profit for any commercial requester who has to pay a small consideration for information on you or others. The more they pay the more they get. The data they get is not to be patient identifiable but you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to work out who patients are for a trip to a local library to view the electoral roll will enable you do this.

The recent Electronic Prescription Service (EPS) is another example of how the Party seeks to improve things but at a price to your privacy. Did you know that instead of simply sending your prescription electronically to your nearest chemist which given the symbiotic relationship between surgeries and pharmacies may be very close by, the Party has decided to send all of your personal information, name, rank, serial number and medication details via and to the NHS Spine 2?

This information is then relayed not in milliseconds, remember this is NHS IT which is slower than Earth to Mars radio communication, this can take anything from hours to days to be sent from the NHS Spine to your nearest pharmacy depending on who you talk to. In fact printing a prescription and giving it to a patient to take to a pharmacy is quicker than the sub light speed of EPS and more confidential too.

And if you read here look at what else the Party does with this information. So if you have opted out of the SCR but opted for the EPS then you have in fact given the Party the right to extract your medicines data and add it to your electronic record depending how you read it?

What is not clear is whether having opted out of the SCR +/- care.data entitles your medication details to be omitted from the Spine if you use EPS. If you opted out of the SCR this did not mean that you had opted out of the care.data scheme did it?

Try finding an answer for the NHS IT system is what Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin dreamed of and any Party always wants control. Hence the desire to have centrally held records, centrally held appointment booking systems, centrally held electronic referral systems and more important central control of who can access this via the centrally controlled issue of Party cards, sorry comradesit is 25 years since liberation, the Smartcard. If one was generous you would say this is just for the needs of bean counters being met by IT for the simple benign collection of data.

If you were cynical you would say that this is a command and control structure of patients and professions which is being implemented by stealth.

EPS is not your GP simply sending your prescription to the nearest chemist it may be another way like care.data for the Party to get its grubby little hands on your personal medical data. So before you sign up to the EPS see if you can get answers to some of the confidentiality issues we have raised above.

Praise be to the Party for ensuring that the freedom of the Party to liberate your confidential information always trumps the freedom of the individual to medical confidentiality.

Does this mean that doctors who use the EPS are breaking patient’s confidentiality if the patient did not want a SCR and in doing so becoming organs of the State? Data mining by stealth and it’s your data and most importantly your NHS “Choice”.