Care Bill [Lords]

Debate between Mike Thornton and Sarah Newton

Tuesday 11th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Newton]

In many of our inquiries, we have looked into international collaborations between universities that are tackling some of the greatest challenges of our time. One example is research into various forms of dementia, and proteins in the brain that contribute not only to vascular dementia, but even to vCJD. We have concluded that in order to meet the huge challenges that those diseases pose to the whole world, we need to pool our resources across universities and research communities internationally. There is an increasing number of well-established protocols and sensible ways of reassuring patients and others about the use of their data. Such international collaboration makes it more likely that we can make discoveries that will drive improvements in people’s outcomes.

Frameworks and safeguards exist to enable universities and academics to collaborate. We should be careful about the language that we use in this context, because there has been scaremongering, and people are identifying all sorts of potential uses for the data for which there is not much evidence. We have been reassured several times today that the information would not fall into the hands of insurance companies and be used in a harmful way.

[Mike Thornton (Eastleigh) (LD)]

The hon. Lady is making a strong point. I visited the oesophageal cancer research unit at Southampton hospital. As I am sure all Members know, oesophageal cancer is a particularly filthy disease, and is very difficult to treat. The lack of data made it hard for those in the unit to find out what was going on, and to have more information to work on. I am glad to say that they are getting there—slowly—but I think it particularly important to note that data of this kind can be used to save lives.

[Sarah Newton]

We could spend a great deal of time talking about different types of medical research that are enabling huge progress to be made with particular diseases. Given the time that is available to me, however, I now want to talk about another aspect of the importance of sharing medical data to improve patient outcomes—the integration of social care with NHS services. I am sure that everyone in the Chamber would say that that was a good thing. It is important for all the services in a community, whether provided by a local council or by primary or acute care authorities, to be joined up around patients and their families to ensure that patients receive the best possible care, whatever their long-term condition may be. That is a subject that we all discuss, and on which we largely agree. However, when it comes to practical implementation, what we hear in inquiry after inquiry is that the barrier that prevents the delivery of those joined-up, improved outcomes is a lack of ability to share data.