If you’re registered with a GP on the Isle of Wight, you should, by now, have received a letter regarding your medical records.
The Isle of Wight NHS are about to launch a scheme that will allow patient’s GP records to be seen by other health professionals on the Island.
The Medical Director at St Mary’s Hospital, Dr Mark Pugh, says: “The general opinion of medical staff on the Island is that it will be really beneficial if there was a greater local sharing of health information between GP Practices and other health services on the Island. This will have a number of benefits for patients and medical staff.”
Possible to Opt Out
The letter from the IW NHS give some detail of how the new system will work, they also included an information leaflet with some Q&As.
On the last page is a form that gives you the option to opt-out of sharing your data. That form has to be used and your not allowed to email in your objection, or phone it in either.
About the system
The company behind the Vision 360 system is called INPS – In Practice Systems. Based in London, they were taken over about 12 years ago by a Swedish company, Cegedim.
The IW NHS trust signed the contract for Vision 360 way back in February this year.
Concerns about medial data
Many people feel that there’s nothing more sensitive that their medical records and at a time when people are concerned about the safety of their personal records, we thought it wise to delve a bit deeper into the security of the information.
Therefore, we put a few questions to the IW NHS about their intentions for the scheme.
Here’s what we asked:
- It may not be linked to other systems, eg. Social Security or Police, but will anyone else besides medical practitioners ever have access to the shared medical records?
- What are the mechanics of medical staff getting access to a patients records? eg how many passwords have to be entered, etc. What’s the process?
- Is INPS (the supplier) currently the only provider of GP systems on the Island?
-
In an interview, INPS said, “This has enabled Tayside to work closely with clinicians and a number of software application providers to develop its portal technology, which it hopes will eventually support several hundred thousand patients.”
Will other applications, from other companies apart from INPS, have access to patients records? If so, which ones and what do they do? - Who/what are the “Community health services” able to see the data?
- Please list the roles of the people will be able to access the data.
- Is there just one level of access, or will different roles have different levels of access to the records? ie does one account role have access to one type of information, but another might have access to a lot more. At an extreme, does the most junior nurse have the same access to data at the top consultant.
- In the interview, INPS said, “Blackmore adds: “Local communities have different attitudes to sharing and Vision 360 can offer local choice whereas working with the national services in England doesn’t really allow you that.'”
How much has the IW NHS chosen to share? - Where will the data be physically located?
- Can you provide a full list of the situations of when records would be accessed without the patients permission – the example given in the leaflet is if the patient is unconscious.
- You mentioned that some medical service are provided off-Island. Will these services have access to the Vision 360 system?
- About the security of records, the leaflet says, “if there are concerns about inappropriate use these will be rigorously investigated.”
- Where and when will these investigations be published?
More questions
We don’t think that the above list is exhaustive, so if there are unanswered things that concern you, feel free to add them below.
If you haven’t received a copy of the letter yet, you can read one and an information leaflet on the NHS Vision 360 page
Image: Tony Hisgett under CC BY 2.0
