Five more NHS trusts involved in serious data breaches
Written by Tom Young
Computing, 17 Jul 2009
Privacy watchdog the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has found five more NHS organisations in breach of the Data Protection Act.
The Royal Free Hampstead NHS Trust reported the loss of an unencrypted CD initially thought to contain medical treatment details of 20,000 patients from the hospital’s cardiology department.
Chelsea and Westminster Hospital Foundation Trust reported the theft of an unencrypted memory stick containing 143 patient details including sensitive medical information.
And Epsom and St Helier University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust has been storing hospital records insecurely for nearly two years following data being transferred between hospitals. ...
Straight away reading this I thought of my previous post about cogeography and commented accordingly (which registered twice - oops!). In light of the previous post here's that comment with some additions....
Such events merely (without trivializing) highlight the human capacity to ERR big(gish) time. Is it not possible for tech to help? If info systems through to mobile devices had a sense of where they are and their status as carrying sensitive data recognised through digital IDs - plus additional meta-dynamic data, then 'cogeographic awareness' might result?I blogged about this with ref to conceptual spaces.
This would be an artificial example and would make it possible for data previously designated as confidential, sensitive, - HOT data if you will - to self-destruct, 'e-vaporate' if it found itself beyond a given combined virtual or physical environment be that hospital, Trust boundary, SHA, or National border...? This capability already exists no doubt in the security services (although sometimes you wonder) or as suggested in the realms of 'MI' and '007'.Cogeographic or (cogneographic) may be a neologism and seeks to conjoin the cognitive (cognition) involved in defining, representing and using concepts in conceptual spaces; AND the finding that knowledge is invariably situated - that is knowledge has a geography.
data could - should - MUST
have a geography too...?
CDs and other media in the first place. Amid the emergence
of renewed debate about the future of e-health
records, clinicians may have a professional
duty to demand cogeographic
properties no
less ...?
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