From Professor J. Wingfield, FRPharmS
SIR,-I refer to my recently published article on data protection (PJ, July 22, p131) in which I said the position on the use of anonymised data had not yet been determined. This reflected many reports that the Department of Health was petitioning for leave to appeal to the House of Lords against the ruling of the Appeal Court allowing community pharmacists to sell anonymised prescription data to database companies (PJ, January 1, p5).
I am now aware that, in a written answer to a Parliamentary question on July 6, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health, Gisela Stuart, confirmed that the DoH had dropped its plans to appeal further. Thus the sale of data derived from "anonymised" patient medication records is permissible, provided that, where general practitioner data are included, the individual prescriber has given informed written consent to their disclosure (see ‘Medicines, Ethics and Practice' guide, no 24, p72).
Joy Wingfield
Nottingham