NHS plan to access users' web browsing history to provide 'personalised' NHS.uk health advice

NHS Digital project for NHS.uk to request access to users' internet logs

NHS Digital is planning to implement a new patient information website, NHS.uk, that would require the technology to be able to examine users' web browsing history with NHS Digital in order to provide what it claims will be a more personalised health advice.

The idea was revealed at an event last week in which NHS Digital's digital transformation director, Beverley Bryant, disclosed some of the organisation's plans for its NHS.uk portal project.

"If we can use location, time and cookies and history to provide content to people then it's likely to be more relevant to visitors, and they are likely to come back for more information," said Bryant.

According to the website Digital Health, which reported on the event, she suggested that "users that went a step further to register, would have access to a personal health record. This would allow them to perform transactions, such as booking appointments and repeat prescriptions, access medical records and upload their own app and wearable generated data".

Bryant said that people would have to opt-in, and willingly provide their personal information, location and browser history, though.

"But once we've persuaded them, that's when we can start to make it personal, so that they get an aggregated view of their health; the last time they came, what is the information they asked for, a record of an appointment," Digital Health quoted Bryant as saying.

NHS.uk is part of the government's plan for more personalised care delivered via online tools as part of its ‘Personalised Health and Care Framework 2020' framework', published in November 2014 by the previous coalition government.

Part of the aim of NHS.uk is to provide patients with instant access to their medical records, as well as their 'transactional' record of interactions with the NHS going back at least a decade.

The NHS.uk initiative is one of a series of major IT projects in the NHS intended to ultimately cut costs and deliver better care.

The organisation was supposed to be going paperless some time in 2018 - although it appears almost certain that the target will be missed.