As well as booking appointments, the NHS app will also allow patients to receive notifications about vaccine campaigns, health checks, cancer screenings and even upcoming clinical trials. “Clinical trials can use genomic science to identify patients who would benefit from the latest treatments, but they struggle to recruit participants – not because people don’t want to take part, but because they don’t have access to the basic data,” he said. He promised Labour would crack down on red tape and allow clinical trials to recruit volunteers through the app. “Half a million people have signed up to the vaccine trial register during the pandemic,” he said. “If we can do it to beat covid, we can do it to cure cancer.”
Patient data is at the heart of Labour’s plan. The NHS recently announced the launch of a federated data platform that will bring together hospital data, but not general practice or social care data. “The NHS has struck gold here but is leaving it buried in the ground,” Streeting says. “General practice data is key to improving the health of our population.”
Streeting promises that a Labour government will ensure a transparent process for what parts of patient data are shared and with whom, and will put in place the necessary safeguards to ensure patient confidentiality. To those who oppose due to privacy concerns, he has a simple message: “A Labour government is up for this fight,” he says. “While the tinfoil hat gang are urging their followers on TikTok to opt out of sharing their data with the NHS – and I fully understand the irony – the government is refusing to stand up to their fear-mongering.”
He recalled meeting the parents of a two-year-old boy at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in Liverpool last January. “The parents have been through hell,” he says. “He’s already had five heart operations in his short life.” But when he asked the parents what their main complaint was, the answer surprised him: technology. “The local GP couldn’t access Alder Hey’s records and the hospital couldn’t read the GP’s records, which meant they had to repeat themselves over and over again at every appointment. The health service should be reducing parents’ worry, not adding to their stress.”
This article appears in the July/August 2024 issue. WIRED UK magazine.
