Tag Archives: Patient

The British Medical Association (BMA) is incorrect to suggest there are 6.4 million more GP patients registered in England than there were in 2019.

In a letter to the new health secretary Wes Streeting, shared on X (formerly Twitter) and viewed over 28,000 times, the chair of the BMA’s GP committee Dr Katie Bramall-Stainer said that patient numbers had “increased by 6.4 million in the past 5 years alone”.

But this isn’t right, and the patient register has only grown by about half that.

Professional bodies should take care to avoid errors in statistics they use, and quickly rectify any mistakes when they occur.

As of June 2024 (when the letter from the BMA was written), there were 63,375,801 registered patients at GP practices in England, up by 3.5 million on…

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Sensitive patient data was shared on WhatsApp by at least 26 healthcare staff members in Scotland, resulting in over 500 verified instances of data disclosure. The data shared included names, addresses, images, videos, and screenshots, as well as clinical information of the individuals involved. However, the most concerning aspect was the unauthorized disclosure of personal data to an individual who was not part of the medical staff, and had been mistakenly added to the WhatsApp group.

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK’s data protection authority, announced this incident and has warned the responsible healthcare authority, NHS Lanarkshire. This organization serves a population of over 652,000 people in the council areas of North Lanarkshire and South…

A telehealth startup that gained popularity during the pandemic has said it shared private patient data with tech giants Google, Meta, and TikTok for years.

As reported by TechCrunch(Opens in a new window), Cerebral, which is used by millions of people to search for therapy or mental health services, said it disclosed data collected from its online mental health self-assessment with third-party advertisers, as well as big tech.

The data was shared via tracking pixels, custom-built code that Meta, TikTok, and Google allow developers to embed in their apps and websites. As The Verge notes(Opens in a new window), Meta’s tracking pixel for instance can collect data about a user’s activity on a given app or website after an ad is clicked on the platform. Information is then tracked in…