Tuesday, January 24, 2006

Heart disease and privacy juxtaposed

I saw the word juxtapose the other day and I've heard it before and knew (at least knew-ish) what it meant and I swear I've used it in a conversation about a party that had it's fair share of pikeys and snobs. Dictionaries and the like define it as "place side by side" with some others going so far to say "especially for comparison or contrast".

So did I choose the write wording for the title when you consider a recent article at the TimesOnline?
It explains the problems of data privacy, not in the scary "ID stolen" light of recent news articles but how it hampers the medical research of heart disease. Scientists and medical researchers are prevented from having access to the information by over-zealous police and council red-tape. The data protection act, long as it is, does include a specific clause or exemption relating to "necessary and proportionate” medical research.

I wouldn't want just anyone to be able to access my personal medical details but what if the legitamate life saving research group wanted to search the now online database for trends in medication use and heart disease? I'm sure they wont need every detail of my medical record, the wonders of online databases allows you to search and 'pull out' only neccessary cross related fields, they don't need to know if someone had an AIDS test or considered suicide and so it wouldn't be included in the search for "medication" "heart problem" "male" "20-40".

I carry a donor card, maybe we should have a datadonor card. "I give my permission for my medical data to be searched and used for medical research by government licenced and independantly regulated medical bodies"

Privacy is great but so is saving people from getting heart disease.

Did I use the word correctly?

Links:
BBC health page
www.americanheart.org
www.bhf.org.uk

3 comments:

  1. Interesting point, at the moment you can't even access someones medical records when they are dead.

    are you listed on the britblog directory yet? it's at www.britblog.com, and your site does qualify to be listed.

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  2. That is a pity, medical records are such a great resource for research! As a med biology student in NL, we would sign a secrecy agreement when working with patient material (but that is a while ago), I think that should cover it.
    I worry more about government and corporation use of personal data...

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  3. Hiya, thanks for your link to my site on yours.
    I think all data should be made freely available, citizen AND government.
    it'll hurt for the first decade but would certainly change the world.

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