The NHS app would not only allow appointments to be made, but also allow patients to receive notifications about vaccination campaigns, health tests, cancer screening and even upcoming clinical trials. “Clinical trials can use genomics to identify patients who will benefit from the latest treatments, but they are struggling to recruit – not because of a lack of people willing to take part, but because they cannot access basic data,” he said. He promised that Labour would clamp down on bureaucracy and allow clinical trials to recruit volunteers through the app. “During the pandemic, half a million people signed up to the vaccine trial register,” he says. “If we can do it to beat Covid, we can do it to cure cancer.”
The Labour plan relies on patient data. The NHS recently announced the launch of a federated data platform that would centralise hospital data but would not include data from GPs or social care. “The NHS has struck gold here, but it is leaving it in the dust,” says Streeting. “GP data is critical to achieving better health outcomes for the population.”
Streeting promises that a Labour government would ensure a transparent process over what aspects of patient data would be shared and with whom, as well as the necessary safeguards to ensure patient confidentiality. As for those who oppose it on privacy grounds, she has a simple message: “It’s a fight a Labour government is prepared to fight,” she says. “While the tinfoil hat brigade takes to TikTok to urge followers to opt out of sharing their data with the NHS (the irony is not lost on me), the government refuses to stand up to their fearmongering.”
She recalled meeting the parents of a two-year-old boy at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in Liverpool last January. “They’ve been through hell,” she says. “In his short life, he’s already had five heart operations.” But when she asked them what their biggest frustration had been, the answer surprised her: technology. “Their local GP couldn’t access Alder Hey’s notes and the hospital couldn’t read the records their GP had. That meant they had to repeat themselves over and over at every appointment. The health service should be easing their worry, not adding to their stress.”
This article appears in the July/August 2024 issue of WIRED Magazine from the UK.