An appeal case against the ruling that anonymised prescription data cannot be passed on by pharmacists was heard in the Appeal Court recently and is to be the subject of a reserved judgment at a date to be fixed.
The High Court ruled in May that the sale of anonymous prescription data by pharmacists was illegal because it involved breaching patient confidentiality (PJ, June 5, p794). The case had been brought by Source Informatics Ltd, a prescription database company, to challenge guidelines produced by the Department of Health prohibiting such sales.
At the start of the appeal case on November 29, the company said that the judge in the earlier case, Mr Justice Latham, had misunderstood the nature of the scheme which, it insisted, did not involve the slightest risk of disclosure of any confidential patient information.
Mr Michael Beloff, QC, for Source Informatics, said that the judge had failed to draw the correct interpretation between "patient information" and "product information". The former would include information about which patient was prescribed which drug, and that would clearly be covered by strict confidentiality, but the latter included which drugs were habitually prescribed by general medical practitioners. This information was only confidential to the doctor and not to the patient, Mr Beloff argued.
Mr Philip Sales, representing the Department of Health, said that the Department was seeking to end targeted marketing to prescribers based on data supplied by Source Informatics since this would "add hugely, and unnecessarily, to the National Health Service drugs bill".
General medical practioners and pharmacists had been given "fair warning" of the legal risks from taking part in the scheme, he added.