NHS England gives key role in handling patient data to US spy tech firm Palantir | Hacker News Reader

NHS England gives key role in handling patient data to US spy tech firm Palantir

theguardian.com

44 pointsBerislavLopac15 comments

There's only one way to address this on a personal level: don't give any private sensitive information to anyone working in the NHS. If they ask for such, say no and say why. Sometimes you can persuade a health-care professional to make no notes whatsoever on the information that you give them, in that case it might be worth the risk. Make sure you save their name, remind them that regular data leaks from the NHS mean that if they are lying to you, you will find out.

It's a sorry state we're in.

DoB, National ID, full name are required information health professionals would almost always require.

What can you avoid giving them? Your spam-only email address? That's the least of your worries.

Sorry state indeed.

This is just not realistic. Medical staff have to take notes, so they know what dosage of medication your own, when your vitals were last checked by staff, where you're supposed to go for testing, etc... not to mention to prevent and protect them from malpractice suits.

I would think contacting the head of your local hospitals would prove more helpful than just saying "don't record this case".

also when you are sick you kind of have other things in mind... sadly

"don't give any private sensitive information to anyone working in the NHS"

I don't see how that is practical in any way - apart from the most trivial of cases how can they prescribe medicine or refer you to specialists if they don't know your personal information?

Edit: Note that I am very concerned about data being shared outside of the NHS but not giving personal information doesn't appear to be a great way of doing this. Hopefully NHS Scotland won't get involved in this...

yeah, that isn't going to work. i don't know if you've ever actually used the nhs in the uk but they will either completely disregard your wishes or just take your arguments as refusing treatment and send you home.

if you care about your health even a little bit, you can't give them any reason to withhold healthcare from you, they already spend a hell of a lot more time looking for a reason to do that than they do looking for a solution to your medical problems.

i don't know if you've ever actually used the nhs in the uk

I have, and used to work in it too, and it's not really about "expressing your wishes". You go into hospital with a broken finger, they ask you if you are taking any drugs, you lie and say no, in spite of the fact that you are still rather off your tits on E which is how you managed to break your finger in the first place. Is there a risk with that? Of course, maybe the drugs they give you for the injury do not agree with E, but there's a risk in telling the truth too, it's a judgement call. Sadly, the fact that all NHS staff are now de facto police informants forces that judgement call on you.

> There's only one way to address this on a personal level: don't give any private sensitive information to anyone working in the NHS. If they ask for such, say no and say why. Sometimes you can persuade a health-care professional to make no notes whatsoever on the information that you give them, in that case it might be worth the risk. Make sure you save their name, remind them that regular data leaks from the NHS mean that if they are lying to you, you will find out.

That last sentence really sounds like a threat. If I was a health care worker and you said that to me, I would definitely document your words in your chart, report you to law enforcement, and tell you that I am unable to provide care without documenting it in your chart as that is legally dangerous for me and medically dangerous for you.

Hi, could we discuss [...]

Um, look, I'd not be comfortable discussing this if it goes on my medical records, could we discuss [...] off-the-record?

Scenario A

No, sorry, it has to be recorded.

OK. Then I'd prefer not to discuss it.

Scenario B

Sure, I'll just record the fact that we had a conversation, not the contents

Thanks, with all the NHS leaks, I'd rather this didn't end up in the papers!

The GBP 350m weekly will go to Accenture now. They will business travel the shit out of it. "Today I'm in San Francisco, tomorrow London and Paris, next week Sydney. Don't have time for you, here's a box with post it notes".

After decades of running away my problems I found that I had no where to run and nothing to distract myself with during the lockdowns of COVID, so I admitted to myself that it would probably seek out therapy.

How do I ensure that my most private of thoughts aren't dilligently jotted down into a computer by a therapist to be sucked up into some LLM that a nefarious surveillance/marketing company will make use of?

I don't. I'm not sure how to find a therapist who is covered by the government who will see me and not take digital notes. I'm not sure how to ask for this because the reasons I'll give to the therapist sound absolutely batshit crazy "I don't want the AI to know my personal problems", "Yeah, okay right this way to the padded room Sarah Connor..." and even if they took notes on paper I have no idea if they'll one day decide to digitize them with some fancy image to text to cloud feature that will be built into MS Word or Epic or this Palantir shit.

It's a bizarre situation to be in, to be geninely concerned about the threat of machines learning exploiting your weaknesses because you decided to get help.

Don't worry, they will anonymise your data:

    username = rot13(username)

Good luck getting any talking therapy through the NHS. From what I understand it's not an area they invest in.

But of course.

This will go badly

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