NHS Trusts Suffers 10 Data Breaches

Who Breached: 9 National Health Service (NHS) Trusts (UK)
Number Affected: Hundreds of thousands
Information breached: various
How: 10 separate incidents

Since the HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) breach affecting 25 million in the UK and a more recent breach affecting 3 million (contractor lost information for learner drivers), a number of health service trusts have reported breaches of their own. The health records for hundreds of thousands of adults and children have been lost by 9 National Health Service trusts in the UK in 10 separate incidents.

Specific data breaches include:

• City and Hackney trust misplaced a CD – 160,000 children (names, addresses)
• Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells Heath Trust misplaced records – 244 cancer patients
• Other breaches involved the Bolton Royal Hospital, Sutton and Merton, Sefton, Mid-Essex, East and North Hertfordshire, Norfolk and Norwich, and Gloucester Partnership Foundation Trust.

The Department of Health (DoH) said, in a statement, that affected people have been notified. Public Health Minister Dawn Primarolo said that this is a serious issue they are working with trusts to resolve:

“It’s not good but we are taking steps as quickly as we can”

Various groups have used these incidents as examples of the dangers of centralized NHS data, which we have mentioned before on this site.

“This is further evidence of the government’s failure to protect the personal information which we provide,” said Conservative health spokesman Andrew Lansley.

What do you think? Do the benefits of centralized medical data outweigh the risks? Or is simply asking for trouble to have such singular access to the data of millions?

Via Reuters Tags: data breaches, nhs, nhs trusts, nhs centralization, health trust, health information, health security, data security, privacy, medical information, identity theft