WRITTEN ON December 12th, 2007 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Data nitwittery, Foundation of Trust, What do we want?

The attempts to win GPs over to Connecting for health face some challenges, to judge by an article in Pulse in a rant prompted by Dave Hartnell’s rather impersonal letter of personal apology. Phil Peverley writes:

In the meantime, as these craven letters are being distributed to 12.5 million families, another section of our well-oiled efficient government machine is continuing with its plans to upload the medical records of the entire population to another national database.

We have learned to refer to it as the national spine. No one asked for it and there was no demand for it. There is no precedent for it, and no evidence that it can be done or that there will be any benefit from it.

However, someone like Dave thought it would be a good idea and that appears to be enough of a reason to spend literally billions of pounds – our pounds – on developing the concept.

What’s it for? What’s the point? And just who, in their right mind, would consent to their private medical records being logged on to a system to which tens of thousands of incompetent New Labour work-experience buffoons theoretically could have access? Not one of the patients I have discussed it with, that’s for certain.

My personal medical records will not be joining this ludicrous Keystone Cops experiment. Neither will those of any of my patients.

Do you suppose Phil’s ID card will reveal his identity to be pseudonymous? Perhaps we’ll be locked up together (along with Joanna and Dame Shirley) and we can all find out.