NHS trusts to be told not to sign exclusive deals for patient data

Department of Health to send letter to trusts ordering them not to sign 'naive' and 'unsophisticated' patient data deals

NHS trusts will be told that they cannot strike exclusive deals to share patient data with private organisations.

That's according to Health Service Journal (HSJ), which claims that a letter will go out from the Department of Health and Social Care shortly telling trust that they must not make exclusive arrangements with technology or other companies looking to gain access to anonymised patient data.

"HSJ has been told there is a growing concern at the centre about ‘naive' and ‘unsophisticated' one-off deals between individual trusts and technology companies that may prevent sharing patient data for other purposes," the specialist Journal claimed today.

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It added that such exclusive deals could also undermine government efforts to share patient information on a national basis.

A number of organisations have entered into data-sharing deals with NHS trusts. Indeed, Google Deepmind has signed a number of deals with NHS trusts, including one with the Royal Free London Foundation Trust that was later ruled unlawful by the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the UK's data protection agency.

There is, as yet, no evidence of exclusive data deals being struck, HSJ stressed.

However, the main reason for the Department of Health and Social Care becoming involved is the Department's desire to strike national deals centrally, a source told HSJ. "If they don't give exclusivity, we can still pull that data together in the centre and use it at the level of the nation, where the real value accrues," they said.

It comes after the September 2018 release of a Code of Conduct for Data-Driven Health and Care Technology that advised against "granting exclusivity of access to data" as this would "limit the benefit to the health and care system".

However, privacy campaigners have warned that the data could fall into the wrong hands and easily be de-anonymised, associating identities back with sensitive patient information.

An outcry over data sharing in 2013 and 2014 forced the suspension of the Care.Data program, only for it to be re-introduced in a new form later.

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