However, I do suggest this is a humdinger!
Strap yerself in and adopt the brace position. The DH are going to have another go at care.data.
" ... [a] new "data services platform" will comprise IT infrastructure and software... that will "collect, store, process and analyse patient level data" from health and social care... including primary care..."
"NHS Digital has started to show the proposals to potential suppliers..."
Err, exactly what does that mean? Suppliers?
"... the platform will feed into a "customer facing data access and analytics service".... make data available to customers with "legitimate requests" and would comply with "emerging national data standards for secondary use..."
In English, I think that means they are going to capture your patient data and flog it.
"...the proposed patient opt-outs... outlined the Caldicott... don't apply to the flow of personal data out of a GP surgery into NHS Digital".
Do I have this right? Even if you opt-out, your data will still be bundled with everyone else's but yours will be anonymised.
Ooooh the bobble hats will soon unpick that... as a matter of principal!
Expect a new row and lawyers to visit the BMW showrooms. If you sit very quietly you can probably hear the banging and sawing as protesters prepare their banners.
Care.data failed because of poorly drafted legislation, a foul-up by Royal Mail, over-reacting politicians and no one understanding what 'pseudonymised data' was... compounded by a very poor sales job of what the analysis of data could do for healthcare and the public.
I fear we are on the road to another ruckus. The Treasury are behind this. They sign-off the programme next week.
HMTreasury recognise we have the best and most comprehensive health data set in the world. Meticulously collected since 1948.
In terms of public health, academia, actuarial calculations for insurances, pharmaceutical research and a lot of other stuff, it is a goldmine. It has the capacity to earn billions.
Before you write to me and say; 'there not going to sell my records'... I should tell you... your records don't belong to you, they belong to the Tinkerman. The Secretary of State.
There will be safeguards but will they ever be good enough to avoid The Mother-of-all-Rows?
There is another side to the story.
Finding out who gets sick, why, what did we do, did it work, what did it cost and do we want to do it again....
Six simple questions we struggle with. We probably can answer them but it takes a JCB to dig through layers of numbers to find out.
When you dig it's amazing what you find.
In 2012-13 nearly 12,000 people made more than 10 visits to the same A&E unit. Just over 150 - attended more than 50 times.
If we could fix that, couldn't we save a few quid?
How about 6% of emergency admissions are down to adverse drug reactions. Track that back through prescribing data and find out what happened... worth a few quid?
Data makes you better, keeps you safe, keeps you well...
Data is our friend. Data management is the problem. We should know, today, what we did yesterday and decide do we want to do it again today?
Tesco stock, 90,000 different products, employ 472k people in 3243 locations. They know exactly what is on their shelves, how many were sold and with a Club-Card, to whom, what was the margin and do they want to sell more tomorrow.
Tesco's isn't the NHS. But, think of it another way; data for better commissioning decisions, real-time dashboards and ROI data to inform innovation investment.
Right now we are buying blind and flying blind.
Once we have data we have analytics, then we can move from graphs to stories. Stories of real lives and how we can save them, make them better quicker and lived, happily for longer.
Here's the question - do you want to sell your story?
