Funding the National Health Service by Selling Access to Patient Data

In a recent note, I discussed the challenges facing theNational Health Service (NHS) in the deployment of IT across this huge health system (see:National Health Service a"Balkanized" Mess; Special Problems with IT). Now comes news that a former British politician is advocating the sale of NHS health data as a source of new revenue (see:A Former Science Minister Wants to Fund the NHS by Selling Access to Patient Data). Below is an excerpt from the article:Now, as...[NIH] finances face increasing pressure, [Paul] Drayson, a former U.K. science minister, is on a mission to help save the government-funded NHS by selling access to patient data to drug and device companies.....Drayson foundedSensyne Health Plc, a for-profit company that ’s trying to get divisions of the NHS to agree to put patient information, including DNA sequences, into a large database. Over its 71-year history, the NHS has collected records on its patients and, in recent years, launched an intensive drive to collect and use patients ’ DNA data for care and research.Sensyne ’s initial target is to gather information on 5 million NHS patients; ultimately, Drayson says, he would like to have access to the data on all 55 million members. According to a coming report from EY consultants, the data could be worth as much as $12 billion annually in better patient care and health, and benefit to the U.K. economy.So far, Sensyne has signed up six of the NHS ’s 150 hospital divisions, known as trusts, r...
Source: Lab Soft News - Category: Laboratory Medicine Authors: Tags: Cost of Healthcare Genomic Testing Healthcare Business Healthcare Innovations Hospital Financial Medical Consumerism Medical Ethics Medical Research Pharmaceutical Industry Public Health Source Type: blogs