I've spoken before on the 'Connecting for Health' IT project, its something that frankly gives me the willies; a huge database of all your medical details that has shockingly bad security measures.

(I've spoken to people working on the system, and trust me, it's horrendously insecure).

They are having a consultation process on the use of your medical information, which you can take part in on-line.

NHS Connecting for Health (NHS CFH) is conducting a consultation with the public and healthcare professionals on the use of patient information for purposes such as health research and managing and planning care.

The health and well-being of the population can be improved by activities such as medical research, disease surveillance, screening, needs assessment and preventative activities.

NHS CFH is keen to obtain the views of the general public, patients and other interested parties on how patient information held by the NHS should be used for additional purposes such as research.

I suggest that everyone in the UK has a look at it.

From the Open Rights Group mailing list I'm part of, someone has made the following point.

Note that the survey more than once claims that patients have no legal right to control information they have given the NHS about themselves once it has been anonymised.

As a matter of law this is nonsense.

Information given in confidence may not be used or disclosed except for the purpose for which it was supplied unless the supplier consents, and this is not changed by removing the supplier's name. So I hope responders will challenge this (and perhaps also the blithe claim that
anonymisation only fails in the case of people with very rare diseases, which greatly understates the risk that an aggregation of conditions,
dates and places will identify someone just as plainly as a name and address).

This is just exactly the sort of function creep that I mentioned in the previous post, please go and have your own say about your data being used in this fashion.

Oh, and you folks do me proud. If anyone else wants to join up (I do recommend it, I'm a proud supporter, and you can see the sorts of bright people we have involved) you can find out more here. These folks do good work that you can help support for less than the price of two pints of lager.

A paramedic who tackled a wheelchair-bound gunman has been hailed a hero.
Garry Perkins was honoured for his bravery by a crown court judge after he and a colleague came face-to-face with the armed man during a routine call-out.
But when they arrived at the house the two paramedics found Ian Wilson, who has no legs, sitting in his wheelchair asking for morphine.
But while Mr Perkins called the man’s GP, he noticed a gun on a radiator.
He said: “We both saw it and looked at each other, then the man produced a gun from down the side of his wheelchair and pointed it at John, smiling.

Myself? I would have either thrown him the drugs and told him to take them all at once - then call out the armed police, or just run.

That the man was in a wheelchair is neither here nor there, you can shoot from a wheelchair as numerous paralympic medal-winners have shown. I've also known wheelchair users who have run quite successful drug dealing businesses.

I particularly like one of the comments left on the site that says,

I have had the dubious 'pleasure' of having met Mr Wilson as a result of my job, and although on the face of it, it is hard to believe that a man with no legs, and confined to his wheelchair could be a threat to anyone,believe me he is a very threatening, aggressive and thoroughly odious little man. Good work from the Paramedics.

Just a snapshot of the sorts of things we can walk into.

Many thanks to the reader who sent me this story.

In the eyes of the government this is a 'successful' job.

For the patient, for the parents, for the staff involved, for everyone that matters - this is not a successful job.

If ambulance services weren't chasing government targets then this may well have been a 'unsuccessful' job for the government - but a success for everyone else.