"De-anonymising data is surprisingly easy: if you know Tony Blair’s date of birth (a matter of public record) and the two dates during his term in office in which he was treated for a heart condition (ditto), you can pick him out of any “anonymised” pool of NHS data in seconds, and then discover all those facts about his health that aren’t a matter of public record... Dr Ben Goldacre and his team at Oxford created OpenSAFELY, a “Trusted Research Environment” that allows researchers to write programs that analyse NHS data in situ. These programs would be dispatched to run against the data held by NHS trusts, and then the system would return the results to the researchers without ever letting them handle the data – which never left the trusts’ own servers." https://goodlawproject.org/cory-doctorow-health-data-it-isnt-just-palantir-or-bust/ #dataProtection#research#NHS#privacy
PS #Palantir, ... is literally named after an evil, all-seeing magic talisman employed by the principal villain of Lord of the Rings (“Sauron, are we the baddies?”)
Update: Although the guidance says they wanted responses by yesterday, it looks like the consult remains open until 1NOV
The NHS is holding a public consultation on the use of puberty blockers in trans kids. Please respond if you are able.
I'm not putting this under a CW because I want to ensure everyone with capacity and inclination to help sees it. But I will hold the details until further down the thread.
A reminder that 10 years ago the U.K. NHS was ranked the best healthcare system in the world. We don’t need a new system. We need a new government that ends the catastrophic staff haemorrhage and remedies the chronic defunding the NHS has endured over the last decade. Tories have been meeting with private healthcare providers over that time and scores of them have shares in private healthcare companies- to them it’s all about making money out of our misery. #ukpolitics#nhs
British people, I cannot explain adequately what absolute hell the American healthcare system is. You know how people say: "at least in the US, you can get fast treatment. At least in the US, you can choose your doctor. At least in the US, you can get the most innovative treatment"?
Lies. All of it.
The US healthcare system excels at one thing only, and that's bankrupting people.
After triage I had bloods taken + blood sugars (separately), an ECG, a chest x-ray, a head CT scan, and two sessions with a doctor. I left with a prescription for two weeks of meds and a referral to a specialist unit.
Total cost to me: £0.
Fuck the government and what they're doing to our health services. Fuck privatisation. Fuck the fact the staff are underpaid and overworked. Fuck the Tories. Support your #NHS.
NHS England is facing a judicial review over the contract for the Federated Data Platform that was recently awarded to #Palantir.
Foxglove, the Doctors’ Association UK, National Pensioners’ Convention and Just Treatment argue the #NHS has no legal basis for setting up the Platform.
The contract for the Platform and the rules governing how our health data is shared should get Parliamentary approval.
@pluralistic writing for @goodlawproject on why the question of NHS data is not one between Palantir & non-use, but between an approach based on profit (and data exploitation) and an already proven system (headed up by Ben Goldacre) that offers real security for patients' data.
The real Q. is how much has Palantir paid decision-makers to get on the inside track?
This cartoon illustrates the real problem with our #NHS#mentalhealth services, the physical ones too.
We expect our health service to be the "support of last resort" for the devastating effects that modern society has on all of us. We can't save the NHS and make it all it can be without fundamental changes in our sick and broken society.
It can start by paying nurses and other workers what we're worth.
So it seems the 'wage-price' spiral may not be a complete figment of political rhetoric; its just that its not #publicsector or the #lowpaid who are the one's receiving #inflation inducing pay rises... no, its the top 1% of earners who are actually the one's getting pay rises above inflation.
It makes further mockery of the notion that striking #NHS#workers & others are the greedy causes of inflation.
Blaming workers for this inflation is not analysis its #classwar
Following on from this week's headlines that almost one third of female surgeons suffer sexual assault at work, a male colleague offers some advice in his letter to the Times. 🤬🤬
I just got a bill for $3,001.36, which is for one visit to the hospital. That amount is what I have to pay after insurance.
Vote the Tories out and protect your #NHS. The system in the US is the system they want for you. They want a profit-making health service because they'd own it and you'd be making them richer every time you go to the doctor.
And people in Scotland: in the long term Labour are not going to save the NHS. Vote #SNP. Make Scotland independent!
#ClimateDiary It seems, IS, utterly crazy, that amidst everything else the UK government is ruthlessly continuing its clampdown on climate protesters. But it is.
Excellent article by Natasha Walter here on how Dr Sarah Benn got 30 days in prison for holding up a placard saying “Stop New Oil” and overall recent developments:
“the direction of travel is fast and frightening and its repercussions are growing.”
#ClimateDiary and now Dr Benn has also been found guilty of professional msiconduct, by a Medical Practitioners Tribunal. This is deeply wrong. Holding up a sign and protesting - for planetary, human health! - does not constitute medical misconduct. I hope many #doctors will speak up against this. #NHS#JustStopOil#ExtinctionRebellion
A recent #ransomware attack on the University of Manchester affected an #NHS patient data set which holds information on 1.1 million patients across 200 hospitals.
I think keeping the British people impoverished by cutting them off from the rest of their continent, and having them pay for a golden chariot to take an unelected person to his coronation, is a great plan for keeping the UK on a good course of harmony, happiness and peace. Cool cool. 👑
Meanwhile, hospitals in the UK may or may not be able to administer emergency care due to Parliment not adequately funding them. 🤷
"The health minister Maria Caulfield told Sky News it was 'pretty severe and serious stuff to be accessing notes that you don’t have permission to'."
Perfectly fine to give an international spyware company access to the entire nation's NHS records before you've even finished negotiating the terms of the contract though.
A new Shelter/National Housing Federation report argues that investing around £12bn on building 90,000 #socialhousing units would see a positive return within 11 years.
Getting people into homes would reduce benefits costs, save the #NHS money & more likely see those in proper homes (back) in #work. It would also, of course, boost employment in construction & associated trades.
The paradox for UK #politics is while a long time horizon is acceptable for #nuclear#energy, for homes, not so much!
“The British Medical Association (BMA) has said it is "very concerned" by a tribunal's finding that a doctor's participation in Just Stop Oil protests amounted to professional misconduct
… She said: [BMA] "Climate change has been declared the biggest potential health crisis in the world by the World Health Organisation (WHO)