A week ago it was announced, due in part to their already impressive preliminary work on e-Care, West Suffolk Hospital was to become a ‘prestigious Centre of Global Digital Excellence’ receiving up to ten million pounds to extend their work into digitising patient records. This is a hugely exciting opportunity and, from within my Bury St Edmunds constituency, has the potential to deliver ground breaking innovation in patient care.
As Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Personalised Medicine, I champion the potential for data sharing to vastly improve the care we receive. Using medical information in the right way could help millions of patients in the NHS and social care sectors; saving precious time for clinicians and, more importantly, for patients. More specifically, it can also deliver new therapeutic and public health interventions in areas like dementia, cancer and diabetes. When I speak to professionals across the health and social care sector, they often say how they would like to better understand a patients profile in order to be able to treat them more effectively; albeit at home, the doctors surgery or in hospital. With the help of medical data, clinicians can get back to maximising the care and treatment of patients.
But, in order to pursue the safe and effective use of medical data, we must address the concerns of professional and patients, around the use data sharing. Above all else, information sharing must be safe and secure, with clear guidelines to protect the interests of patients. For research indicates nine out of ten people trust their doctors with their lives but only 50% with their medical history. We need to trust in our clinicians to protect our medical information. Furthermore, we need the guarantee that the same standards and security which protect our financial information for instance, are in place to ensure the safe and suitable use of our health data.
One idea is to develop a single overarching framework for data, which is simple and easy to understand. Information would not be shared unless it is necessary and strict laws would outline the responsibilities of bodies and their access to medical data. Over time, data and data security can be integrated into new and emerging services; marking a new era of medical care and technology. Whilst I appreciate this is all easier said than done, the steady introduction of finding new ways to use our medical data, will over time, strike the right balance between clinical advancement and personal and medical security.
Already, advancements in medical data usage are taking place across the UK from GP surgeries, hospitals and leading universities; researching and informing treatments for improved patient outcomes. Yet the real advancement will come from access to medical data; with information on genetic diseases and treatment patterns for instance. The potential lies in the medical information of each and every one of us. It’s about time we unlock the future of data.
Published in the East Anglian Daily Times