Does Santa have the missing data?
Those lost Child Benefit discs have got to be somewhere ... Sharôn Levy, RCN Informatics Adviser, has an interesting theory.
The news about the two discs containing the details of 25 million Child Benefit recipients was breaking just as we were entering the Christmas period. I provided reassurance to my children by explaining that those discs were part of Santa’s backup plan to access contact details of all children across the UK. This was accepted without further questioning.
While this may only be Christmas hilarity, the idea of losing or mismanaging confidential and sensitive health data is a risk that we all have to consider. The drive for centralised storage for core clinical information increases the risk to data integrity and security.
But is it something the RCN should “worry” about? Should we have an “instant” policy or a position statement for such breaking news? Should we be highlighting the implications to both practitioners and clients, and offering advice?
I think we must! We should have a dedicated mechanism to consider every development, and to identify the e-Health implications and their relationship to practice. Having members and staff working collaboratively on an RCN e-Health Programme Board is the vision that the Information in Nursing Forum is pursuing and one that I embrace wholeheartedly.