ITPRO

Printed from www.itpro.co.uk

Register to receive our regular email newsletter at http://www.itpro.co.uk/reg/register.

The newsletter contains links to our latest IT news, product reviews, features and how-to guides, plus special offers and competitions.

Skip to navigation

    NHS Trust leaves medical data at bus stop

Yet another NHS organisation has been rapped by the ICO for losing sensitive data.

By Tom Brewster, 24 Aug 2010 at 17:15

Bus stop

Royal Wolverhampton Hospitals NHS Trust has been found in breach of the Data Protection Act after leaving a CD at a bus stop.

The CD, which contained scans of 112 patient records from the Intensive Care Unit of New Cross Hospital’s Heart and Lung Unit, was found at a bus stop near the hospital.

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) was informed that the CD had neither password protection. Nor was it encrypted.

In an investigation into the incident, neither the ICO nor even the Trust were able to establish where the CD had come from or why it had been made.

“The fact that this information was several years old is of no consequence – patients’ personal data should always be handled in accordance with the Data Protection Act,” said Mick Gorrill, head of enforcement at the ICO.

The trust has agreed to take remedial measures to ensure a similar incident does not reoccur.

The NHS is now infamous for misplacing sensitive data. In May, it emerged more than 1,000 data breaches involving personal data had been reported to the ICO, with the NHS ranked as a top offender.

To date, no financial penalty has been levied on the organisation. The trust has not issued any statement following its censure by the ICO, but in its own annual accounts it admitted to nine data loss incidents in the 2009-2010 financial year. None, though, qualified as "Serious Untoward Incidents", in NHS parlance.

Email to a friend

Print this page

< Previous   Security : News Next >

Be the first to comment on this article

You need to Login or Register to comment.

    You may also like...

 Sponsored Links

advertisement

    You may also like...

advertisement

    Register for IT PRO

You'll get exclusive member benefits including free whitepapers, downloads, Webinars and weekly newsletters full of the latest IT PRO news, reviews, insight and expertise.

Sponsored Links
Advertisement