Is your data safe?

Depends on what that data is about and who you want to keep it safe from but ...

An unnamed journalist at ComputerWeekly headlined "Police to be allowed searches of national database of NHS patient records" on 28 February.

It went largely unnoticed but the minister for the NHS’s National Programme for IT, Ben Bradshaw, has confirmed that data on a central database of millions of confidential health records will be made available to police where there is an “overriding public interest”. The phrase “overriding public interest” is not defined.

Whilst "How secure?" by FishNChipPapers says that ComputerWeekly reports that receptionists at Royal Bolton Hospital's Accident and Emergency department had been looking at the patient records, then printing them to add to the casualty record card.

So, not only is the database apparently open to access by all and sundry it also seems that they are doing so to print out the records to add to a record card. And I thought it was about computerising medical records.

I say that he says that she says that ... this is how rumours start. However, I have no reason to doubt the sources I've quoted.