It began like every other business talk. But after the ritual praising the nation’s pharmaceutical industry and the encouragement of those elsewhere to take root in British soil in today’s life sciences speech, David Cameron moved onto depict the NHS as a vast database, where patients might also be subjects, and the line between treatment and research could be increasingly blurred.
Data these days is hot stuff. Referring to the database possessed by the Institute of Psychiatry, Mr Cameron said:
“It’s got their brain scans, their medical records, their notes – a huge wealth of information, all consented to, all anonymised – that’s helping them find new answers in the fight against dementia.”
The government was consulting on rewriting the NHS constitution, he said, so that sharing patient information for the benefit of research was the default option. “The end result would be that every willing patient is a research patient”
Earlier, when discussing angel investment, the prime minister had compared the UK favourably to the US. He could have mentioned another advantage: the result of having a national health service rather than private health care is that the government has access to a database which is truly a national snapshot, and one on a massive scale.
The question of sharing medical data in order to benefit the patient concerned is nothing new. But releasing the data online, as Mr Cameron promises the government will do this month, is new – and it’s already provoked some angry responses. Andy Burnham, the shadow health secretary, has attacked it as the “commercialisation” of the NHS. Those who opposed the concept of a national health database in the first place will be twitching at their bandages. But the prime minister should already be aware of how these people feel – he has dabbled in the subject of a national database before. Only that time, he was opposing it.
A more serious problem for the government may come from the medical practitioners that make up the NHS. Inculcating a healthy suspicion for drug companies starts young. In an address to students, the British Medical Association acknowledges the pharmaceutical industry to be a “hub of scientific innovation”, but goes on to warn medical students to avoid gifts, free lunches or other such temptations those scientific innovators might offer.
“Don’t doubt our ambition,” the prime minister said as he drew to a close. He was addressing the pharmaceutical companies. But ordinary NHS users will be listening carefully too.
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