BREAKING

notice from Matt Hancock, signed March 20th, provides legal backing for the NHS to set aside the duty of confidentiality in response to covid-19. Means NHS orgs and GPs may share whatever patient data they want, with whoever they want, as long as it is to fight covid

the notice is issued under Regulation 3(4) of the Health Service Control of Patient Information Regulations 2002 (COPI). Here are the relevant bits of the legislation

These powers to share data last for six months, until September 30th 2020. They then expire absent explicit renewal from the Secretary of State

This probably means that data protection folks thinking about how to designed contact tracing apps are wasting their breath (cc @EerkeBoiten et al). The normal controller/processor dynamic is not in play

anyone have a good PDF hosting service? I have signed up for Document Cloud but have to wait for my account to be approved. will put the PDF online once I have one

This notice from Townhead Surgery in Bradford explains the implications at the GP level http://www.townheadsurgery.nhs.uk/data-sharing-privacy-notice-townhead-surgeries,67062.htm

it's not really surprising that the letter hasn't hit the press yet, despite the fact that it was sent to basically the entire NHS. it's the nuts and bolts of something we all knew was happening anyway. almost by definition, the letter should not be a surpise

if this action is a surprise to most folks, if the setting aside of confidentiality is not expected, then Matt Hancock is on dodgy ground in signing it. My view is that it's completely within expectations

here is a link to the PDF https://drive.google.com/open?id=1a1-0KacipxRZtujJsn0PpWx2uNvDftZ4

an eagle-eyed follower has spotted the notice on @NHSX website https://www.nhsx.nhs.uk/assets/Final_General_COPI_Notice.pdf was there any comms around this that I missed?