Care.data removed
Care.data was intended to extract the clinical contents of the GP record, along with partially anonymised information including age, gender and a partial postcode. This was to be uploaded to the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC) and linked up with information held about the patient in other parts of the NHS, it could then be used for research and commissioning purposes.
But the scheme also included plans to sell data – for a small cost-recovery fee – to researchers, charities and private organisations, which attracted a lot of concern from GPs and privacy campaigners as it was run on an ‘assumed consent’ model.
After the furore, NHS England began runnning ‘pathfinder’ pilots in four parts of the country to test different ways of rolling out the scheme, but these have now been scrapped after Dame Fiona’s review.
