Medical Records: Data Protection

(asked on 9th January 2017) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Prior of Brampton on 20 December 2016 (HL3943), and further to the remarks by the Secretary of State for Health on 25 February 2014 (HC Deb, col 148), that people should be able to opt out "from having their anonymised data used for the purposes of scientific research", whether such an opt out still covers hospital episode statistics, and if not, when they announced this change.


Answered by
Lord O'Shaughnessy Portrait
Lord O'Shaughnessy
This question was answered on 23rd January 2017

Where a citizen has objected to the disclosure of personal confidential information by NHS Digital, more commonly referred to as a type 2 opt-out, their opt-out is being applied to personal confidential information (including Hospital Episode Statistics data) as set out in the Direction to NHS Digital from the Secretary of State.

The Direction makes clear that data which are anonymised in accordance with the Information Commissioner’s Office’s (ICO) Anonymisation code of practice are not confidential information, therefore where Hospital Episode Statistics data are released in a form that are compliant with the ICO’s code, those opt-outs are not applied. If however the data is merely de-identified not to this standard then the objection or opt-out is applied.

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