The NHS app not only lets you book appointments, but also lets patients receive notifications about vaccination campaigns, health tests, cancer screenings and even upcoming clinical trials. “Clinical trials can use genomics to identify patients who will benefit from the latest treatments but are struggling to recruit – not because they don’t want to take part, but because they don’t have access to the underlying data,” he said. He promised that Labour would cut red tape and allow volunteers to be recruited for clinical trials via the app. “Half a million people have signed up to the vaccine trials register during the pandemic,” he said. “If we can do this to beat Covid, we can do this to cure cancer.”
Patient data is at the heart of Labour’s plan. The NHS recently announced a federated data platform that will centralise hospital data but will not include general practice or social care data. “The NHS has struck gold here and is still killing it,” says Streeting. “General practice data is key to achieving better population health outcomes.”
Streeting promises a Labour government will ensure a crystal clear process for what aspects of patient data will be shared and with whom, as well as the necessary safeguards to ensure patient confidentiality. As for those who oppose it on privacy concerns, he has a basic message: “This is a fight the Labour government is prepared to fight,” he says. “While the tinfoil-hatted brigade take to TikTok to urge followers to stop sharing their data with the NHS – the irony is not lost on me – the government refuses to engage in their fear-mongering.”
He recalled meeting the parents of a two-year-old boy at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in Liverpool in January last year. “They had been through hell,” he says. “He had had five heart operations in his short life.” When he asked them what their biggest concern was, the answer surprised him: technology. “Their local GP couldn’t access their Alder Hey notes, and the hospital couldn’t read the records their GP kept. It meant they had to repeat the same thing over and over again at every appointment. The NHS should be reducing their worries, not adding to their stress.”
This article was published in the July/August 2024 issue of the journal Czasopismo. WIRED UK Magazine.