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NHS: Databases

Answer

Historically each national health service organisation has been responsible for the physical and technical security safeguards, and access arrangements, for the very many local databases containing information about patients and NHS staff. These range in scale and scope from trust-wide patient information systems, to ephemeral personal contact lists held by individual members of staff.NHS organisations are required to comply with comprehensive guidance on information security standards set out in the NHS information governance toolkit. Performance against these standards by NHS trusts and primary care trusts is collected centrally and monitored for compliance. Legal penalties for individuals and organisations misusing personal health and other information are provided for under section 60 of the Data Protection Act 1998. NHS organisations are responsible, as employers, for the actions taken on their behalf by their employees, and for disciplining their staff when they behave inappropriately. The practice expected of NHS organisations in managing the use and protection of patient information is set out in the document, ““Confidentiality: NHS Code of Practice””, published in November 2003.Access to the national systems and services being developed and delivered through the national programme for information technology is determined by the policies, processes and technology provided by the Department's NHS Connecting for Health agency. These include that a user must have a smartcard. Smartcards are issued only after identity and qualifications have been checked under arrangements that conform with the e-Government interoperability framework (eGif) level 3 standards for the registration and authentication of staff. Staff must also be registered as a member of a health care team, for example a general practitioner practice or a clinic, that the patient is registered with or has been referred to, providing that patient with care, and will then only be able to access as much information as is needed for the purpose of their role within the health care team.Users are required to acknowledge their acceptance of the terms and conditions under which they may operate, including that smartcard will not be shared, smartcards and logged-on computers will not be left unattended, and conformity with the NHS Code of Confidentiality. Nominated information assurance leads in each organisation ensure the access controls are being adhered to correctly and that no unauthorised access is allowed.The security of patient identifiable data travelling over the new NHS broadband network (N3) is further protected using various network security controls, and encryption which ensures the two end points of the communication are valid, speak the same cryptographic language, and encrypts the communication that passes between them. In addition to encryption, the network security controls include each NHS trust, and the national spine database, having a firewall to protect it. The N3 network runs intrusion detection and prevention systems alongside other network management processes. Further, all of the data centres being used for national programme systems meet the highest standards of data centre security as defined by the Communications Electronic Security Group, the information assurance arm of the Government Communications Headquarters. Regular reviews of the end-to-end security infrastructure are also undertaken to identify where industry best practice has changed or technologies improved so that these can be incorporated into the overall system.While no system can be 100 per cent. secure, together these safeguards have been devised to provide an unprecedented degree of assurance of security for national programme systems and services, and the personal data they will contain, compared with existing local electronic systems. They are evidence of the very great importance that we attach to protecting the confidentiality of patient information. They contrast sharply with the situation with regard to paper records. As well as often being difficult to read, or inaccessible when they are needed, these are inherently insecure and can be easily lost, as exemplified by a recent case where paper copies of patient information from 2001-02 were found in second-hand filing cabinets.

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

136144; 461 c308-9W

Session

2006-07

Subjects

Databases NHS

Link

View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk