UK government set to extract hospital data to Palantir system without patient consent

The UK government is set to extract patient-identifiable data from NHS hospital systems and share this with its data platform based on technology from Palantir, a move that seems set to provoke another legal challenge. Without consulting patients or giving them the choice of opting out, NHS England and NHS Improvement — the …

[IanRS]

Data for planning

"This organisation handles an average of N operations of type X per week. We have a backlog of M cases."

Repeat for all operation types and other activities.

If the data is for planning purposes, what more do they need?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Data for planning

NHS hospitals track something on the order of a couple of billion patient interactions per week. Every patient, every procedure, every drug, every incident, every staff absence, every scan, every maintenance callout etc. etc. etc.

This is serious data territory.

And exactly why Palantir of all people should be precisely nowhere near this.

[Sulaimaan]

Re: Data for planning

That seems a complete non-sequitur.

If anything, analysing data of that complexity, data that seemingly unrelated, and correlating it to extract information and draw conclusions beyond raw human ability seems exactly what Palantir is tailored for.

The fact that they don't harvest or store their clients' data, and the fact that they pioneer anonymisation in data, this makes them an even better fit for such a sensitive area.

[alain williams]

We will lose all control of the data

once it hits Plantir - no matter what the contract says.

[Anonymous Coward]

I for one

Welcome our Lord Emperor Thiel

(Anonymous so they know who I am)

[VoiceOfTruth]

We serfs do not have a voice

Do not think that we live in a democracy. We are considered subjects not citizens. The "clever" people with their useless PPE + law degrees decide this sort of thing.

[Mike 137]

Re: We serfs do not have a voice

"The "clever" people with their useless PPE + law degrees"

Those PPE degrees don't seem useless at all. They apparently serve as PPE in another sense.The fact that once so qualified one can be ejected from office and almost immediately re-appointed in the same role shows how well the protection works.

[cyberdemon]

Re: We serfs do not have a voice

Seems like we've bought a shedload of sub-standard PPE-graduates..

[Fruit and Nutcase]

Re: We serfs do not have a voice

Caught a bit of Alexei Sayle's Imaginary Sandwich Bar this week on the car radio - there was a line about the politicians who had gone to Eton, and I think he also mentioned PPE. To paraphrase - with alumni of the calibre of Cameron, Johnson and Kwarteng, Eton should be put into special measures.

[Loyal Commenter]

Re: We serfs do not have a voice

I do like Alexei Sayle, but his political views can sometimes make Karl Marx look like a centrist...

[ICL1900-G3]

Re: We serfs do not have a voice

If you read his autobiography Stalin ate my homework, you'll know why! A great book.

[genghis_uk]

Re: We serfs do not have a voice

I never though of Alexei Sayle as a Private Eye reader but they had this joke a couple of issues ago (1583 p34)

[Martin Gregorie]

Re: We serfs do not have a voice

Unfortunately all too many Members of Parliament don't have any qualification as useful in the real world as a legal degree. Instead the popular path to a seat in Parliament seems to be:

1) Go to University and study politics

2) Join the party of your choice

3) After graduation, get a job as an intern and/or researcher for the party of your choice

4) Try to keep your nose clean at least until you get nominated for seat

5) Repeat (4) until elected

IOW, the current crop seem to enter Parliament knowing 2/5 of bugger all about anything except politics and boy is that obvious when you look at the current shower.

Requiring at least 10-15 years doing any non-political job before being allowed to stand for Parliament would almost certainly make a vast improvement in the way we're governed, simply because we'd get elected Members with some knowledge of the world outside politics

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: We serfs do not have a voice

This simply isn't true. The majority of MPs come from either a professional or business background. While the number of people following this route has risen in recent years it's still only around ~15%.

Your mistake is vastly overestimating the significance of the role of MPs in this kind of policy decision.

This kind of decision is made by ministers.

Ministers who allegedly really like golf.

[VoiceOfTruth]

Re: We serfs do not have a voice

Almost all ministers are MPs. There are occasional peers who are ministers but >95% (without checking) will be MPs.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: We serfs do not have a voice

>Almost all ministers are MPs.

And funnily enough the vast majority of them (including the current PM, CX and Health Secretary) come from professional rather than pure political backgrounds as well.

The makeup of parliament has little to no bearing on the actions of government when it comes to procurement and policy because there is no way for MPs to direct or hold accountable government on this front short of legislation, which is controlled by... government. We shouldn't be feigning outrage about MPs being of a lower calibre, just a bunch of jumped-up SPADs, because aside from simply being untrue it simply doesn't matter.

We should be focusing on who has been playing golf with whom.

[Vincent Ballard]

Law degree

Look at who in the current cabinet *does* have a law degree (Raab, Braverman, Dowden) and ask yourself whether it's really useful. Braverman is particularly interesting: quite aside from the extremely recent scandals about security violations and her ministry keeping asylum seekers in illegal conditions, she was Attorney General in September 2020 when the UK government said it was going to break international law "in a limited way".

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Law degree

According to wikipedia, three more cabinet ministers studied Law after their first degree: Robert Jenrick (Immigration), Victoria Prentis (Attorney General), and Kemi Badenoch (International Trade). Four ministers don't have their degrees recorded, so the absolute maximum number of lawyers is 10.

(Badenoch's first degree was in Computer Systems Engineering - we have somebody in the Cabinet who has a clue about IT!)

[Vincent Ballard]

Re: Law degree

I missed Badenoch's second degree, but Prentis and Jenrick are not in my list because they're ministers who attend cabinet rather than cabinet ministers. (Although admittedly the main reason that I made the cutoff there was because my coffee break is finite).

[Fruit and Nutcase]

pseudonymization

ouputText = inputText.reverse()

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: pseudonymization

So the really crazy thing is NHS Digital actually have in their possession a pretty effective anonymisation platform based on Immuta, which is more than capable of performing things like purpose based access control, differential privacy and k-anonymisation.

The platform that NHS England are going to force NHS Digital to use - Palantir's Foundry - is nothing more than a glorified ETL tool and the "pseudonymisation" being talked about here essentially the replacement of your NHS number with what amounts to a hash of your NHS number. It would take all of four seconds to de-pseudonymise you.

[Dinanziame]

Re: pseudonymization

You should do that twice, for even more anonymity!

[Loyal Commenter]

Re: pseudonymization

Don't forget to ROT13 it (twice for extra security) and also XOR it (twice for extra secrecy) with "secretsecretsecretsecret..."

[bpfh]

Re: pseudonymization

Needs encryption, not just reversal.

Double encryption will be doubly secure.

$output = rot13(rot13($input));

[Anonymous Coward]

Hidden backlog

That'll be me then. After a 1 month holiday giving the IT system a makeover, my GP practice now doesn't make appointments. You have to wait for them to become available. When? "Maybe Monday afternoon, maybe Tuesday morning, we aren't told beforehand. You'll have to call then." It's like some Soviet-era scramble to get in the queue for cabbages.

So how can this data-slurping bonanza benefit the sick person in the street? I don't know. Maybe Palantir can open up some of their HPC data centres as "warm banks" to keep pensioners out of hypothermia.

[I could be a dog really]

Re: Hidden backlog

Our practice runs the "release appointments at 8:30" routine. If you ring at 8:28 you'll be told to ring back at 8:30 and they'll hang up. So you have to dial at 8:29 so that by the time the recordings have played, it's 8:30. But unless you are really lucky, at 8:29 all their lines are engaged - so you have to sit there hitting redial until you get through (10 minutes and 100 calls last time !). If you are really lucky, you'll get through before the response is "sorry, no appointments available today".

There has to be a better way.

[Fruit and Nutcase]

Re: Hidden backlog

Since lockdown, the mandatory announcement that you have to sit through (standing is optional) runs to just under 90 seconds. And the monotonous tone only drives up my blood pressure - so, I have the stop watch ready on the phone, and put the phone on mute when it connects till it is safe to unmute, when the keypad options get enabled.

[DexterWard]

Re: Hidden backlog

May not work for all surgeries, but for ours, hitting the # key stops the pre recorded message and connects you

[Eclectic Man]

Re: Hidden backlog

No tried the # key for my GP, but once you've heard the pre-recorded message once, if you can remember the correct number to hit on the keypad, hitting during the message works a treat.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Hidden backlog

There is a better way: ration by price not by scarcity.

[Dan 55]

Re: Hidden backlog

If you like that kind of thing you have the choice of ringing up Bupa.

All the galactic brains in NHS management need to do is roll back to the previous system which wasn't perfect but was better than this.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Hidden backlog

Then you are rationing by scarcity of money.

Its a bit like rationing by skin tone.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Hidden backlog

Ho look a tory Hunt came out of hiding

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Hidden backlog

please go to USA and stick your head up the orange arse if you want that for healthcare

[M.V. Lipvig]

Re: Hidden backlog

There is - the American for-profit way. We can book appointments at our convenience as far as a year out. For something we need now, like a sudden Illness, we have Urgent Care. We don't see our regular doctor, but we can see a doctor today if we need one just by showing up. We can also go to an emergency room and be on an operating table within minutes if the need arises. Yes, the bills can be up there, but what price life, eh? Course, we haven't quite got our own version of NHS yet so we may see that disappear and start enjoying the same superior sort of socialized medical care you get there at 'Ol Blighty.

[Richard 12]

Re: Hidden backlog

When you look at the figures, the US Government actually pays more for healthcare per resident than almost anywhere in Europe.

Odd how that works.

Of course, if Medicare was allowed to negotiate with suppliers, that would change. Oh yes, Biden and the Democrats just passed that law, so maybe you'll finally start getting some value for your tax money. I do hope so.

[MrBanana]

Re: Hidden backlog

Insurance based schemes never work well for the person paying the bill. Be it US healthcare, where your doctor will make you have an MRI scan for a verruca, or car insurance policies that will only payout when using their hyper expensive list of garages for the most basic of repairs. It is obvious collusion of insurance providers and their associated services, leading to monopolistic type regimes where the person at the bottom ends up paying the bill.

[Glen 1]

Re: Hidden backlog

To be fair, I remember things being much better before conservatives got their grubby paws on our Health Service.

Yes, we've had a pandemic, but we had contingency plans for that. We were maintaining stock of required equipment... Until the conservatives decided to stop maintaining it and sold it off. We had 'nightingale hospitals' - conference venues converted to hospitals at great expense. However, 10 years of conservative policies meant we didn't have the staff to use them.

When British journalists asked Singapore leaders how they managed the pandemic better than most, the reply was (paraphrased) "Why are you asking us? We just copied your country's contingency plans"

We also have "urgent care" drop-in centres where we can see a doctor just by showing up. The waiting times however are less than optimal. A&E triage is still a thing, so if you if your appendix is about to burst, you will be sorted out fairly rapidly.

However when the capacity of A&E is reduced thanks to conservative policies (including policies resulting in a lack of staff), it means non life-threatening injuries are dealt with on a "when we can" basis. If someone has a badly broken leg that's not life threating, it means that once they are stabilised, they are not a priority. - but if they can't be moved because of a lack of beds in the hospital, they are stuck in the ambulance - which is then unavailable for the next call.

Conservatives would love a for-profit model of the health are system. It means they wouldn't have their taxes going towards the healthcare of other people. They don't seem to understand - that's how insurance works. We are already paying for it.

A badly run insurer/hospital would have the same problems.

The problem is that in the UK, we are already paying for one inadequate healthcare provider whether or not we pay for a second (or a wild west of providers). The solution is not to move providers, but fix the one we have.

In the states, I imagine there is a liability issue if your provider is unable to provide a service they are contracted for. With conservatives running the show, I feel we have more than passed that point.

Bring on an General Election.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Hidden backlog

As someone with relatives in many parts of the NHS and friends who are at Hospital Trust Executive level, I can assure you that the biggest problem is not the Hospitals, to a lesser extent is not the problem of the doctors, but is nearly all down to Adult Social Care, which is the realm of local authorities. This is the reason that the (usually) elderly are blocking beds (between 35 and 55% in most hospitals) which screws the rest of the system!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Hidden backlog

So blame Adult Social Care which has been gutted by austerity, the market decimated by first brexit and then covid (and considering it's all really badly paid horrible work it's amazing anybody wants to do it) for all the problems is JUST NOT HELPFUL. Never a problem in the NHS it's always someone else'se fault.

Yes there are issues in ASC, mainly with staffing and funding. There are also unsafe discharges by hospitals which just causes a revolving door of readmissions and puts more strain on a creaking system (just one other problem). ASC was screwed in covid with pretty much no support whatsover and has been crippled over recent years. We also know hwat happens when elderly paitents are pushed out of hospital too fast when not clear of covid...

What is needed is not a blame game but working together for ASC and NHS which is sorely lacking when one side wants to blame the other for all their ills. We need a proper strategy for health at all levels to prevent hospital admissions and support people, however with privitisation-profit eyeing tories in power who literally do_not_care about vulnerable and disadvanataged people (literrly 90% of ASC clients) as 'social care is socialism' it will not happen.

A healthy society is a prosperous one, shame our governement doesn't support the wellbeing of society to get the benefits as all they see is a negative on the balance sheet. We need more sport for kids (gutted by school funding cuts), social centres to get people out and active (gutted by Local authority cuts in central funding) and many more like this at local levels which is hard sell when all people see is council tax rises and potholes in the roads.

[Glen 1]

Re: Hidden backlog

That's fair...

The ASC that Cameron/Clegg made the responsibility of the local authorities then eviscerate their budget.

Then put into law that councils couldn't put their taxes up to compensate.

https://www.communitycare.co.uk/2016/07/13/cuts-reform-cameron-legacy-adult-social-care/

I mean, you are correct, but the manner of your correction makes it looks like you're looking for someone other than the conservatives to blame...

[Eclectic Man]

Re: Hidden backlog

The USA per capita spend on healthcare is almost double the UK's:

"The United States spends almost 15% of gross domestic product on health care compared with less than 8% in the United Kingdom. Population health as measured by infant mortality and life expectancy are broadly comparable in the two countries and lag behind those achieved in high performing systems like Japan and Sweden. Although the majority of the public in both the United Kingdom and United States express dissatisfaction with their healthcare systems, a higher proportion of the British population think their system works well, and a lower proportion believe the system needs to be rebuilt completely, than in the United States."

From: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC554041/

[Nick Ryan]

Re: Hidden backlog

Ah yes, the "great american way". Where if you not rich enough you can just suffer and die in pain. The US has the worst medical health of any "developed" nation, more personal debt incurred by medical needs and more individuals desperately trying not to pay for even basic medical care. Hell, many would rather walk tot he hospital if they could rather than have to pay for an american ambulance.

America does not have a functioning society - a functioning society looks after all members of the society. America pretends to be christian, the politicians won't get voted in if they don't at least pretend to be christian loudly in their profiles. Yet absolutely none of what christian morals are meant to include, looking after each other, everyone's equal and so on are applied in any way whatsoever. A "society" that caters only for those at the top 0.005% will become more and more unequal over time, and more and more draconian measures will be put in place to put down those not in the 0.005%. The reversion of females to second class citizens in the US under fundamentalist pretences is part of the journey. Where will it end? Don't know, but it's going to be messy.

[stiine]

Re: Hidden backlog

You're correct, but wrong. Functional societies members look after their fellow members, not the society's government. If you're relying on the government, you don't actually have a functional society.

[Vincent Ballard]

Re: Hidden backlog

In functional democracies, the government is a tool of society.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Hidden backlog

Well, you would be wrong. Talking to someone who was an ER nurse (and their husband a consultant surgeon) in the US at the time, the NHS under Blair had lower waits for emergency medicine than the US did. Waits for routine (non-emergency) care was better. If you want an urgent appointment for routine care, there's the option to pay for a private (non-NHS appointment). Ultimately, the US spends *a lot* on healthcare, and sadly doesn't get particularly good care in return (see various UN/WHO tables).

One of the biggest successes of the Labour government was improving the healthcare systems following years of neglect under the conservatives. Unfortunately, following c.12 years of underfunding by the Conservative government, the system has regressed to the point it was when Labour came to power last millenium (yes, the waiting list was colossal in 2019, before COVID).

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Hidden backlog

And 50% of the appointments will be people wanting to talk about stuff that years ago we dealt with ourselves with a quick trip to the Chemist. The other 50% will be people who went in for something seemingly minor and were told to take a couple or paracetamols and call back in a week or two if it hadn't cleared up, by a busy and overworked GP mostly trying to do their best with few resources.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Hidden backlog

My surgery no longer takes telephone appointments - you fill out an e-consultation form, which is assessed/triaged by a doctor. If it can be dealt with by phone/text (e.g. "I sent a prescription to the chemist for you"), it is, otherwise you're given an appointment. If it's deemed urgent, you'll get an appointment that morning. Before COVID, I was looking at a 4-6 week wait to see the GP - that has decreased dramatically with this system.

If you don't have internet access, the practice staff will function as a voice-operated-keyboard for you.

[Al fazed]

Re: Hidden backlog

It's not about curing people, for f*cks sake, it's about making money....

[steelpillow]

Let's face it

Breaking the law is a rite of passage for senior politicians these days. Surprisingly, there are still several Ministers who have yet to do so, our Health Secretary included. Open-sourcing our deeply personal confidential data is just such a great way to join the power players.

The joke icons is not for this post, it is for what this post is about.

[Fruit and Nutcase]

Re: Let's face it

Breaking the law is a rite of passage for senior politicians these days

Surely Suella "‘never ignored legal advice’" Braverman KC would never do such a thng

[Eclectic Man]

Re: Let's face it

Of course Ms Braverman did not ignore legal advice, she probably (I have no evidence for this, it is merely my personal prejudice against high ranking politicos showing) assessed the chances of getting caught and the likely consequences. Rather like almost every bid manager for whom I've been the security consultant on an HMG related bid has done. (Sort of 'that may be your opinion, but we'll lose the bid if we cost it in.' or 'it'll never happen', or 'I don't care'.)

Troll icon due to complete lack of evidence for the above.

[Fruit and Nutcase]

Re: Let's face it

You could say that - I couldn't possibly comment.

Hell and damn it - I will. Butter wouldn't melt in her mouth.

Interesting item that Private Eye has covered in the past has resurfaced...

https://twitter.com/PrivateEyeNews/status/1587772749153542148

And now *another* headache for Suella Braverman, as the bar standards board looks into a “dishonest statement to promote her career” as she tried to break into politics.

[BebopWeBop]

Re: Let's face it

Possibly the few simply have not been found out yet?

[s. pam]

Who do I need to contact

To join in the lawsuit against this happening?

I opted out and continue to opt out.

[Trollslayer]

Re: Who do I need to contact

Your MP?

[cyberdemon]

Your MP

See icon

:(

[Ken Moorhouse]

Opening a can of worms

One MP was so good at this, he thought he would repeat the exercise in the jungle on reality tv.

[Winkypop]

Relax

Especially you #423976.

We know your blood pressure isn’t great.

[MachDiamond]

I'm sorry

Please tell me the argument again for one consolidated government entity handling an entire country's health care being a good thing.

This is like NASA outsourcing data storage when the bulk of what they do is to collect and analyze data. If you can't do your primary job in-house, something is very wrong.

Why shouldn't NHS be able to handle their own data analysis? It's a massive entity. For them to hire a few people to set up the sorts of information they need to be the most efficient they can has to be much cheaper than paying some outside company to do if for a major profit. What's next, a company in another country hired to asses and collect taxes?

You'd think the UK is trying to one down the US. Just like the stories where some functionary downloads a whole load of PII to their laptop which then gets stolen from their car when they make a stop at their church on the way home for something. It's almost always the person stopping off at church when the laptop gets removed from the seat of the car where it was sitting in plain view. I guess those sorts of faux pas are the only way that information can plausibly show up at different government agencies that shouldn't have access to it.

[Strahd Ivarius]

Re: I'm sorry

You were speaking of NSA, not NASA, right?

[LogicGate]

Re: I'm sorry

With the nickname "MachDiamond", you can be sure that he is speaking about NASA.

NASA tecnical reports are a treasure trove both for engineers and for historians.

Want to know the friction coefficient for various types of rubber on different runway surfaces?

Want to know why the certain changes were inbtroduced to later model P40 during WW2?

Want to know the aerodynamic properties of the airship Macron?

Want to fond the best location for you hidden lair on Mars?

NASA is your friend...

[MachDiamond]

Re: I'm sorry

"NASA tecnical reports are a treasure trove both for engineers and for historians."

NASA does and has done incredible amounts of research into all sorts of things. All rocket companies today have benefitted from metal alloys that NASA developed. They spent no end of money testing darn near every fuel and oxidizer they could imagine to find the combinations for any scenario. If you want to run high test H2O2 with a petrol kicker for your rocket engine, you can find a NASA paper with all of the technical figures you need.

[MachDiamond]

Re: I'm sorry

"You were speaking of NSA, not NASA, right?"

There was a story a while back about NASA having data access issues with a "cloud" provider. It seems the scientists were using up more than the contracted allowance of bandwidth working with the data stored.

[Halfmad]

Re: I'm sorry

It's not the UK though it's only England.

[Nick Ryan]

Re: I'm sorry

It's short termism and greed combined with a desire to finish off the NHS. The NHS had the capability to do a great many things and did them in-house where appropriate. Now the line of "where appropriate" is gone and almost everything has to be farmed out to contractors to do instead. While in some situations this is a good idea, given the scale of the NHS farming almost everything out to contractors is only going to significantly raise costs, distance those doing the actual work from the organisation (people removed from an organisation are not so motivated) and line the pockets of those with interest in the companies doing the contracting.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I'm sorry

You couldn't be alluding to the case of Cmdr. Alan West in 1986 could you? He took a friend's dog for a walk along a canal towpath while some top secret papers were in his pocket. These papers fell out, and were discovered by a passer-by who happened to be a journalist (what an unlucky coincidence!). The papers detailed proposed cuts to the Royal Navy, and when the story broke the Government was forced to cancel the cuts.

As for the unlucky commander, he was court-martialled, but was able to move past this unfortunate incident to eventually become First Sea Lord as Lord Admiral West of Spithead. He's currently a member of Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee, and takes the Labour whip in the House of Lords.

[Anonymous Coward]

Here we go again.....

The Royal Free Trust ("trust"....hah!) handed over 1.6 million medical records to Google-DeepMind.

GDPR legislation insists that this slurp needed the consent of the 1.6 million citizens in order to proceed.

In actual fact, the slurp went ahead without the consent of a single citizen.

Result: Absolutely no action under the law to redress this 100% illegal slurp!!! Yup.....no action at all.....

.....and here we go again.........

What exactly is the point of a legislature passing laws........when there is ABSOLUTELY NO ENFORCEMENT????

Link: https://www.theregister.com/2021/09/30/royal_free_deepmind_representative_action_uk/

AND THESE TOO:

Link: https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2018-palantir-peter-thiel/

Link: https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252482365/Privacy-International-puts-Palantir-in-the-dock-for-NHS-data-analysis-work

[Boris the Cockroach]

And after

several billion pounds have been splurged to the private sector* along with the NHS's records**

We find out several things that contribute to the NHS problems

Not enough doctors(including GPs)

Not enough nurses

Not enough rest of the clinical staff***

Not enough beds

Not enough hospitals for the population.

All of which will cost money and time to solve... and since the government cares about the time issue to the point of the next election, a quick window dressing exercise in "Look... we're making plans to solve the problem" which will be just enough to keep the voters onside at the next election****

*The company involved alledgedly may have a senior minister family member on the board

**wether you like it or not

***theres big list of support staff to put in here

****assuming any are left alive

[RegGuy1]

Re: And after

We are living in an ageing society. More and more older people relative to the number of working age.

The largest costs to the NHS relate to treating old people. Old people have got used to not paying tax ('my house is for my kids; get your thieving hands off').

If you can't con the workers to pay more (ie the NI rise to 'pay for' care services, ie services for the not-working old) and you can't get the markets to lend more money all you have left is stuff public workers pay, they'll have to earn less, and we'll force more and more from the NHS for the same money. No one will pay more tax.

Three and a half hour wait for an ambulance? Welcome to the new normal. Welcome to greedy, shitty Britain.

[Strahd Ivarius]

Re: And after

Soylent Green is the approved solution to this "old guys" problem

[Richard 12]

Re: And after

Matt Hancock did do his level best to "solve" the care crisis by putting his "protective ring" around care homes.

He would have gotten away with it if it wasn't for all those pesky care workers, caring for their clients despite everything he threw at them.

[Al fazed]

Re: And after

I'm 69 and I am frankly pretty pissed off with the way that most of my doctors applications for me to have treatments have been knocked back by "a panel of experts" who decide that the GP's reference was not valid in this case.

Chiropractics has been a recognised treatment which should be available under the NHS. In 40 years I have been unable to access McTimoney or any chiropractic via the NHS

I have had several GP's applications for a Mental Health Assessment knocked back.

The first retry was partially successful in that the "assessment" wasn't the type of assessment that the GP had asked for !!!

So I had to get a private psychiatric assessment done whilst waiting for the retry down the NHS path.

Getting the assessment was time critical, but the panel didn't mind.

And the panel struck again this year.

I imagine the people that sit on the panel get paid a reasonable amount of money for throwing my GP's applications into the bin and back to the bottom of the ladder.

Hopefully I'll have passed away by the time Palantair get their hands on my data.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: And after

Had a tumble while out running and incredible back pain, double incontinence, leg spasms, leg pain and numbness. Went to the hospital, went to the doctors multiple times - even had a doctors note of a visit saying "too much pain to diagnose". After a year I could walk a short distance unaided (felt as though on stilts) but incontinence had quickly changed to chronic retention. After 5 years I saw a different Dr. who immediately diagnosed Cauda Equina. I looked up the symptoms when I got home. I had been into the doctors (saw 4 different Drs.) with all the "Red Flag" symptoms in the first few weeks. The treatment is an immediate investigatory MRI and if required an operation within 24 hours, with a very good prognosis! It was only after 2 months and a bit of "kicking off" that my insurance company would pay for an MRI, the NHS would not.

The 8 tablets I have to take in the morning, and others through the day, have already cost much more than the operation would have!

And there is no negligence claim, as that is only paid out to assist in very specific ongoing costs - adaptions to house, car or daily assistance - a ruined previously very active lifestyle (now can only sit most of the day) is not a reason.

In my experience the NHS has serious flaws, but private medical is no better.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: And after

fuck off with that chiropractic shit. thats just dangerous bollocks.

you may as well be putting money on a fire to keep warm. definatley should not be paid for by NHS.

that shit paralyses people and kills. think youself lucky your not in a wheel chair allowing quacks to fuck with your back.

don't bother coming back with that "but it works for me anecdote bollocks", that's just self delusion so you don't feel like a fucking idiot!.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: And after

Could be worse. Homeopathic treatments used to be available on the NHS (stopped in 2017 apparently). There was a homeopathic GP in the next town when I was growing up - a neighbour used to swear by them.

[Loyal Commenter]

Re: And after

Presumably, those swears were so diluted as to be completely ineffective, and therefore extremely offensive to everyone in the world?

[Loyal Commenter]

Re: And after

Did they refer you to an orthopaedist? Did you turn that down in favour of a back-cracking-quack?

[Kernel]

Re: And after

"If you can't con the workers to pay more (ie the NI rise to 'pay for' care services, ie services for the not-working old) and you can't get the markets to lend more money all you have left is stuff public workers pay, they'll have to earn less, and we'll force more and more from the NHS for the same money. No one will pay more tax."

Am I missing something, or did I remember it wrong?

I seem to recall that one of the things promised as a result of Brexit was that there would be millions of pounds more per week available to fund the NHS, so money should not be the problem. Mind you, I don't live in the UK and may only be misinterpreting something I only saw part of while not really paying that much attention.

[Nick Ryan]

Re: And after

Oh no, there was definitely millions more promised every week for the NHS. The criminal Boris Johnson stood in front of a big bus with it plastered all over the side and promised it personally.

There are even pathetic excuse-makers around who enable liars such as this who have tried to claim that the NHS has already been given this extra sum. Except that the extra sum they were deceitfully trying to claim was just the inflationary increases in the NHS budget that tend to go through every year... nothing actually additional to this and nothing like the lies on the brexit bus.

[Strahd Ivarius]

"gather the data for the purpose of understanding [...] the crisis in treatment waiting times"

The crisis is the result of under funding the NHS since decades.

Can I get the money promised to Palantir, now?

[Nick Ryan]

Re: "gather the data for the purpose of understanding [...] the crisis in treatment waiting times"

Also the enforced privatisation of large operational chunks of the NHS through forcing hospitals to no longer use internal services and instead to have to out source these same services to an external organisation. Which will always cost more of course, as there's another level of profit to be made, and it's very common to find direct links between these external organisations and politicians and Tory party donors.

[Standard]

Consequence

Might as well put a ribbon round the data with a tag saying "A gift to the corporate medical companies of America from the serfdom of England. Please exploit rapaciously."

Problem is in unforseen consequences.

History. | Itself. | Repeat.

Don't start what you cannot stop.

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't expect ICO to give a damn

I expect the ICO to ignore any row about this, "move along now, nothing to see".

This is based on my ongoing fight for the past 20+ months to get ICO to do something about unlawful GP Practice data sharing in Northern Ireland.

So the ICO case officer finally wrote to my GP Practice for the first time at the start of August *this* year (18 months after I opened the ICO case), in response my GP Practice agreed they had never agreed to/signed the Data Sharing Agreement (DSA) that allegedly lawfully enabled the sharing my GP Practice had been engaged in for 9 years. My GP Practice also confirmed to the ICO that the Practice had no idea as to which organisations they were sharing my personal data with in this fashion.

Now I assume that any sane/logical person when told by the Practice that the Practice was not a party to the DSA would then ask the Practice as to (evidence of) what other agreement/contract was in place instead to make the sharing lawful.

Did the ICO case officer do this? Of course not, no further questions were asked of the Practice as to showing that their sharing was lawful. The case officer accepted some waffle regarding "decisions were made at a regional level" when the fact is that my Practice is the sole Data Controller for my personal data that they hold and so *they*, whether solely or jointly with some other organisations, must be involved in deciding how to share personal data which they are the Data Controller for. Obviously I am disputing the ICO case officer's "findings".

The ICO is not fit for purpose, indeed they appear to wilfully misinvestigate issues.

Lindsay, if you read this, is there any point me emailing you any more background info, such as ICO/GP communications, as you never responding to my last mail of August last year? If you're not interested in this as a potential story you could at least say so rather than just going "radio silent".

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Don't expect ICO to give a damn

Relating to the issue in the previous comment (re Northern Ireland) and also to the NHS England extraction of patient data to send to Palantir, the BMA have written to their GP members about this (https://www.bma.org.uk/media/6330/bma-accelerated-access-to-gp-25-oct-2022.pdf):

"Under the Data Protection Act (DPA) 2018 GPs are the Data Controllers for their patients’ records (current and previous). The GP system suppliers, via the CCG/ICB Practice IT agreement are their Data Processors. Under DPA 2018 Data Processors cannot be instructed by anyone other than their Data Controller to change record access settings. It is therefore unclear on what legal basis NHSEI will be relying to direct the suppliers to turn on this functionality."

The BMA have also advised their GP members to write to write to their electronic patient records system suppliers to tell them not to enable this, from the template letter BMA have provided to GPs (https://www.bma.org.uk/media/6325/bma-template-letter-for-system-suppliers-oct-2022.docx):

"We would view your ignoring this instruction as a breach of the data controller and processor relationship. We view the interference by other agencies as acting ultra vires and inconsistent with data protection law."

So, like my issue in Northern Ireland, NHS England/NHS Digital seem to think they can ignore the Data Protection law fact that only a Data Controller can lawfully instruct their Data Processor to share personal data.

The ICO case officer investigating my complaint has repeatedly conveniently ignored such an matter (of a 3rd party instructing a Data Processor to share personal data) despite me bringing it to their attention on multiple occasions.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Don't expect ICO to give a damn

You can keep emailing me if it makes you happy, but I will continue ignoring you. I know that eventually you will give up and go away. Since you've neither spent money for a barister nor gotten the media lke BSJ involved, you're just a nothing. Nothing is ignored.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Don't expect ICO to give a damn

I agree. The ICO refused to foolow up on a complaint I made because it had been more than three weeks between me last contacting the organisation in question and complaining to the ICO. The ICO routinely take a fortnight to respond to any email, so expecting another organisation to go through the processes regarding data seems optimistic to say the least.

Their 'workers' seem determined to do as little as possible, and do it at glacial pace.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Don't expect ICO to give a damn

> Their 'workers' seem determined to do as little as

> possible, and do it at glacial pace.

I have one ICO Data Protection case open more than 21 months, another open more than 20 months. Both took approx 4 months to be allocated to a case officer.

I have one ICO FOI complaint case (regarding another org) open for 15 months - it took 10 months to be allocated to a case officer and it is almost 2 months since I last heard from the case officer (they're waiting for the org to respond, an org that consistently miss deadlines, request extensions, miss the extensions, and these days just say "we cannot say when we will respond", and ICO appear powerless to do anything about this).

So I think case delays/timescales are more reflective of ICO's policies rather than the individual staff (though they also do seem to do the least work they can get away with).

ICO has recently admitted to me that when, in the past, their staff told me that ICO was unable to investigate matters than occurred when the previous law was in effect (UK DPA 1998 prior to 25/05/2018) as they had no legal powers to do so that this was "incorrect" (i.e. their staff repeatedly misled/lied to me) and that rather it is an ICO policy decision not to investigate such matters unless they involve criminal offences (i.e. UK DPA 1998 Section 55).

[Al fazed]

It's all bollox

Look, sorry to those folks who've heard me saying this before,

for f*cks sake..........the patient data is not the issue, as everyone who commented above recognises, there's a problem at the top of the shit pile which prevents execution of the processes and functions at the botom of the pile in a timely fashion.

Then you have to run due dillgence on the data (?) being given away ............

Meaning, that unless you are a current main stream NHS user, sitting in a queue most likely, the rest of us have already jumped ship, a while back - when it comes to looking after ones Health and Well Being. We have been using Alternative Medicine and Complimentary Medicines, Herbalism, Shamanism etc,. generally as the queuues are a lot shorter and also generally speaking, as these "cures" are actually curing people of all the main issues that affect a modern body and/or mind.

Where is this precious, "accurate", "timely" data on British "SUBJECTS" ? It isn't in the NHS records.

The only accurate or timely data in the data set is confined to the above said NHS users, who are currently the "subject of" dodgy medicines from interplanetary pharma, experimental surgeries and orthopeadic and other exotic treatments, which frankly speaking, I wouldn't use one someone I loved.

So the NHS data is data on slaves and serfs who don't have any alternatives and have to use the NHS services, when they are available, whilst, GET THIS....

Nurses fight for 5% pay rise, Govermins say fuck off, you are having 3.5%, two weeks later Barristers get 15% pay rise, but I imagine barristers every where DO NOT USE THE NHS, unless they were unfortunate enough to be in a car crash and end up in A&E, they have Private Medical Treatment, backed up by Medical Insurance. So 11.5% difference in percentage must be to pay those medical expenses.

BUT WHAT DO I KNOW ?

The Government isn't fit for purpose.............

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: It's all bollox

"BUT WHAT DO I KNOW ?"

from your nutty rant, i'd have to think you know fuck all.

[John Brown (no body)]

Is the pandemic over yet?

"agreed not to extend Palantir's contract beyond the pandemic without consulting the public."

Who decides/has decided the pandemic is over? I'm sure the pandemic is over/not over depending on who you ask, when you ask them and whether there is profit or political capital to made from answering yes or no.

[Anonymous Coward]

Palantir's data will be ready just in time for privatization of Health Insurance and US style health care organizations. Those with Palatir recorded pre-existing conditions will pay accordingly or be bumped off.

[Anonymous Coward]

Remind me again...

... didn't we, long long ago, have governments that kept the rules that they put in place themselves?

[Anonymous Coward]

you voted for this.

Well. Someone votes Tory. It isn't me.

[Loyal Commenter]

Creeping Privatisation

"...has instructed NHS Digital to gather the data for the purpose of understanding and reducing the crisis in treatment waiting times resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic."

The "crisis in treatment waiting times" may have been caused by COVID during the peak of the pandemic, but the current multiple crises in the NHS are caused by the government, and anyone can see that this is a deliberate strategy to cause failures and use this as an excuse for carving off anything that looks profitable and selling it to party donors.

[Anonymous Coward]

What did people think that "abolishing red tape getting in the way of business" meant?

If we're not going to be a member of an international partnership that values and protects our privacy we need a written constitution that enshrines these protections, and any others we value, so they can't be removed in the next bonfire of regulations by a party of the short-termist and self-interested without the support of a supermajority of the people.

The absolute supremacy of Parliament, with a powerless second chamber and head of state, is dangerous.

[Anonymous Coward]

Right.

I knew about this about a year ago, but previously under NDA. Here are some things not still covered:

- Palantir got noticed by senior NHS management for doing Covid data work.

- Palantir have boatloads of money, and some apparently decent data tech.

- Palantir know nothing about health data.

- Palantir are in UK hospitals figuring out how to pull data out of data warehouses etc.

Also, Palantir's price list on GCloud is eye-watering. Check it out: https://assets.digitalmarketplace.service.gov.uk/g-cloud-12/documents/92736/903585090715128-pricing-document-2022-02-18-1509.pdf

[EnviableOne]

At least I have a new source of infinite electricity

Dane Fiona Caldicott (the former NHS data Guardian) is currently generating 1GW while spinning in her grave.

Who else saw this happening when NHS DIgital got absorbed into NHS England ...

this is definitely against GDPR, as Health Data Is "Special Category data," and very difficult to Anonymise, especially when you have a unique identifier like an NHS number or an uncommon condition.

As has been said above, this system is broken, you can see it in all the figures, the NHS got into trouble in about 2014, which is when the Lansley reforms of the Health and Social Care Act 2012 kicked in, it wasn't perfect before then, but it was better than this.

The NHS doesn't exist, its 2700ish organisations that get to put the badge on, that are all independent fiefdoms, which have their own boards (full of people on multiple 6 figure salaries)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: At least I have a new source of infinite electricity

Having done this: NHS number is incredibly easy to anonymise (the hard bit is getting NHS trusts to use it in the first place vs MRN). You're right - anyone with one or more rare conditions is harder to do. Rebaselining timelines can help.

> The NHS doesn't exist, its 2700ish organisations that get to put the badge on, that are all independent fiefdoms, which have their own boards (full of people on multiple 6 figure salaries)

Yes. And patient data is a significant source of revenue. They often call it "hospital data", not "patient data".