Health bosses deny risk to patients over data loss (From Haringey Independent)

NHS North Central London deny risk to patients over data loss

12:30pm Thursday 16th June 2011 in Top Stories By David Hardiman

A HEALTH authority which lost laptops holding sensitive data has claimed there is “a very low risk” patients could be identified from it.

NHS North Central London and the Metropolitan Police are investigating after 12 laptops were stolen from a storage facility for London Health Programmes – a body that analyses patient care.

One of the computers contained large amounts of personal details – according to a national newspaper it held the records of 8.63 million people, although the authority has not confirmed this.

In a statement, it said: “London Health Programmes routinely audits a large amount of data to track the care that patients receive. The data did not include patient names.

“The data was deleted from the laptop after it was analysed, and we currently believe there is a very low risk that any data could be recovered from this laptop or that patients could be identified from the loss of this data.

“We take any potential data breaches very seriously and a full investigation is underway.”

It added that the laptops were password-protected, but data was unencrypted - the Department of Health insists any patient data should be encrypted.

The health authority - which covers the boroughs of Barnet, Camden, Enfield, Haringey and Islington - has also informed the Information Commissioner of the loss of data, and could face penalties if found to have put patients' personal details at risk.

Helena Kania, of patient support group Haringey Link, said: “We have a problem in not knowing what has been lost and there are conflicting reports.

“There are obviously problems in the security at the NHS level in dealing with patient records.”