NHS England ends care.data programme

NHS England is to close its care.data programme, following a review by the national data guardian for health and care Dame Fiona Caldicott.

Health minister George Freeman said the closure was because the consent and opt-out model proposed by the review went further than the approach planned for care.data.

He said: “The government and the health and care system remain absolutely committed to realising the benefits of sharing information, as an essential part of improving outcomes for patients.

“Therefore this work will now be taken forward by the National Information Board, in close collaboration with the primary care community, in order to retain public confidence and to drive better care for patients.”

Mr Freeman published a consultation on recommendations from Dame Fiona’s review on the new data security standards and proposed consent/opt-out model.

Dame Fiona emphasised the importance of protecting anonymised data, and the minister said the government would support stronger criminal sanctions against those who misused anonymised data to identify individuals.

Her review found the public trusted the NHS with confidential data. But she proposed 10 security standards to be applied in every health and care organisation that handles personal confidential information.

Her proposed new consent/opt-out model would give people a less complex choice about how their personal confidential information is used than did care.data, the minister said.

A separate review of NHS data security by the Care Quality Commission found a widespread commitment to data security, but staff faced significant challenges in translating this into reliable practice.

Staff did feel lessons were always learned from patient data breaches, the quality of staff training on data security “was very varied at all levels” and benchmarking with other organisations “was all but absent”, the review found.

It recommended the leaderships of every organisation should demonstrate clear responsibility for data security on an equal footing with, clinical and financial management and accountability.

IT systems and all data security protocols should be designed around the needs of patient care and frontline staff to remove the need for workarounds, which in turn introduced risks into the system, .the review said.

It also called for the urgent replacement of obsolete hardware and software still in use.