GP Patient Records & Privacy: Not Between These Four Walls

“Treasure trove' and ‘gold mine' are descriptions which jar when describing the sensitive health care data recorded by GPs in countless daily consultations up and down the country in the expectation of doctor-patient confidentiality. Yet, this is how some people perceive the patient records of 55 million citizens which the UK Government plans to make available to a variety of users in pseudonymised form in a scheme unveiled without fanfare in May 2021, formally known as the General Practice Data for Planning and Research. Supported by David Davis MP, an assortment of medical bodies, charities and privacy campaign groups have forced a Government rethink – at least for now.

In truth, anonymised datasets such as this have for years been available for research purposes and the potential healthcare benefits are manifold, including the treatment of cancers and the development of the world's first steroid treatment for Coronavirus sufferers. If access to the dataset was