More data loss.

Does anyone guard our data any more?

Tens of thousands of patients' records have fallen into the hands of criminals after thefts of laptop computers from a hospital and a GP's home, it emerged yesterday.

In the latest in a string of cases where personal data of huge numbers of people has gone missing, the information was stored on the portable machines in contravention of NHS guidelines.

Confidential medical records of around 11,000 patients, along with their names, addresses and dates of birth, were on a laptop stolen from the home of a doctor in Wolverhampton.

The information was supposed to be encrypted, but checks have found this had not happened, making the data accessible if passwords are cracked.

In a separate blunder which also emerged yesterday, details of another 20,000 patients went missing after six laptops were stolen from filing cabinets at a major teaching hospital.

The computers were stolen earlier this month from St George's Hospital, in Tooting, South-West London.

The data, which also cannot be accessed without passwords, contained patients' names, postcodes, hospital numbers and dates of birth.

In some cases the information - which was being used to monitor waiting times - also referred to procedures they had undergone, but it did not contain medical histories.

Normally such information is stored on the hospital's central network, but because of technical problems it was being stored temporarily on the laptops.

Following both thefts, the health trusts concerned have written to the patients affected as well as informing police....

...More than 100 computers have been stolen from hospitals across London alone over the past year, some of them containing patients' medical histories.

St George's said this was the fourth "data breach" it had suffered in the last year.

Campaigners have said such security lapses mean the Government should scrap plans for a centralised computer network containing all NHS records.

**They (Labour) can piss away trillions on pfi schemes, waste god alone knows how much on consultants an pen pushers, assorted bean counters whilst allowing cancer patients to die if they dare to top their NHS treatment but can they guard our data?

Can they bollocks.

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