The British public supports the use of personal medical data, without consent, for public health research, finds a study published on bmj.com. Most people also think that cancer registration should be required by law.
Health research and surveillance is vital for the delivery of effective health services and public health interventions. But since the introduction of the Data Protection Act, research has been disrupted because of concern about the ethics and legality of using identifiable data from patient records.
The NHS code of practice on confidentiality states that it cannot be assumed that patients are happy for information about them to be used for purposes other than direct care, but there is currently little evidence on public opinion.
So researchers set out to assess the views of the British public on the acceptability of personal information being used by the National Cancer Registry for public health purposes.
A total of 2,872 people answered a series of questions on cancer registration and personal privacy in face-to-face interviews. Of these, 81% said that holding details of their name and address in the registry would not be an invasion of their privacy, 88% said that they had no objection to their postcode being held, and 87% said that being invited to take part in a research study on the basis of their inclusion in the registry would not be an invasion of privacy. Only 2% considered all of these to be an invasion of privacy, and 72% were happy with all three.
81% of respondents also said that they would support a law making cancer registration statutory.