Digital Records in the NHS

Debate between Stephen Metcalfe and Geoffrey Clifton-Brown

Thursday 28th April 2016 Westminster Hall

[Stephen Metcalfe (South Basildon and East Thurrock) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak in this debate, despite not thinking I would. I am actually a Parliamentary Private Secretary in the Department for Education, but I was asked to stand in this afternoon for the Minister, whose PPS could not be here. Suddenly I find myself for the first time ever keeping a holding pattern in advance of a Minister getting here. I suspect the confusion has arisen because the debate that was supposed to take place at 1.30 pm was cancelled, and this one was moved forward. I only discovered that this morning by spotting on the Order Paper that there was no debate other than this one. I suspect the Minister suffered the same problem.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

Given the way that my hon. Friend is handling his situation, I am sure it can only be a matter of time before he is elevated to ministerial status.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Metcalfe]

I thank my hon. Friend for those remarks; she is absolutely right. We have been talking about people suffering with rare conditions and about putting them together and spotting patterns, but tackling health inequality by comparing data from different parts of the country and by comparing, perhaps, people’s longer term histories is equally important. It may also help policy makers to find a way of developing a geographically stratified approach to tackling some of these health inequalities. Just moving on slightly, I think that part of why clinical commissioning groups were established was that they would allow doctors and clinicians locally to identify what was in the interests of the people they represented. Of course, using data to do that is vital, so I could not agree with my hon. Friend more.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

Before my hon. Friend moves away from the subject of healthcare, does he agree that we need to concentrate much more on preventive healthcare, rather than on the palliative treatment of health issues? Often early interventions, or even action taken to prevent a condition from occurring in the first place, can be far more effective for patients and more cost-effective for the NHS than treating symptoms once they have arisen.

[Stephen Metcalfe]

I agree completely. Prevention is always better. Sometimes we find that we have discovered the way of preventing something after it has been contracted—that may sound a bit confused. I am trying to say that if we have enough information in advance, we might be able to tell the right people how they might prevent themselves from getting a certain condition. We could identify them, identify the risk, inform them and hope that they do not then fall into the trap, as opposed to having found them with the condition and then saying, “If you had done this, you would have been able to prevent that particular condition.” My hon. Friend is absolutely right.

The wider benefits to the economy are the second, very important part of this. We have talked about the huge benefits and about making the United Kingdom—England— particularly with the fantastic NHS, the best place to develop, research, test and trial drugs, which has to be for the benefit of our constituents. If we have earlier access to new treatments, that can only be to the good. My hon. Friend used the excellent example of Cure Leukaemia in Birmingham and it sounds as though having that model rolled out across the country would be beneficial to many. I will certainly bring that particular aspect of my hon. Friend’s remarks to the Minister’s attention.

I shall start to wind up. We have to address a number of challenges to bring the ideas to fruition. When we talk about data, people get a little jittery. They think that we, as the authorities, are starting to collect information on them that they would not necessarily want collected, so the anonymising of data will be vital, as will ensuring that people understand how their data are used and how they can have access to their data and protect themselves.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

I emphasise to my hon. Friend that the most important thing that should come out of this debate is not the fact that data are a good thing—we all admit that—but that we need, from the Government, a way to push this forward. I and my hon. Friends have made a number of suggestions: there should be a public information campaign, common standards and perhaps a commissioner for data—or some such post—so that on a national basis we can really give this whole thing a push. Up till now, progress has been far too slow. We need to push things forward, so that we can really gain the benefits from it.

[Stephen Metcalfe]

My hon. Friend is completely correct; that is the key. It is about making sure that the Government put in place the correct mechanism not only to protect data but to give people confidence, and that is one of the biggest challenges that we face. I will make sure that is heard loud and clear.

The other big challenge is having the correct personnel to analyse the data. A major challenge for big data as a whole—not just in the clinical setting—is to have people who understand how the data work. Big data will be worth many billions of pounds to the UK economy over the next few years, and not just in the health sector, so we need to make sure that we have the right stream of well-trained, informed people coming through.