By Marcus Vass, head of Digital Health, Osborne Clarke
The UK Government has introduced The Data (Use and Access) Bill to the House of Lords.
The Bill is enabling and aims to drive more effective data use to promote growth across many sectors. This includes some notable proposals for Digital Health and Life Sciences.
Common standards to be published for healthcare data
The Bill amends the Health and Social Care Act so information standards for IT technology or services can be published – likely around mandatory interoperability and APIs for services which process patients’ information.
IT providers in connection with the provision of health care or adult social care must have regard to these standards.
The regulator will call out publicly those who fail to meet them.
The government hopes this will facilitate smooth flow of patient information across healthcare, giving staff quicker access to patient data.
Longer term, it’s one of the steps in unlocking the full potential of unique NHS data, a key target identified in Darzi’s report.
In due course, suppliers to the NHS and social care sector will need to ensure that their contracts with both their customers and their own suppliers reflect the new requirements.
Use of personal data for commercial scientific research to be made easier
The Bill retains the proposal in the last government’s Data Protection and Digital Information (no. 2) Bill which widens the definition of processing for scientific research purposes to include any research that “can reasonably be described as scientific”, whether publicly or privately funded or commercial or non-commercial.
These changes should benefit those Life Sciences organisations which conduct research or use research results, although some other helpful definitions such as the definition of ‘statistical purposes’ have potentially been narrowed.
AI and automated processing
The Bill removes some limitations on the use of automated decision making using personal data, which may facilitate the development and use of some Digital Health AI systems.
However, the changes are limited and restrictions remain for automated decisions involving sensitive data including health or genetic data which will be key to most Digital Health applications using AI.
Other data protection reforms
The previous government’s proposals to reform UK data protection law included changing or removing requirements for records of processing, data protection officers and data protection impact assessments.
These more fundamental changes don’t appear in the Data (Use and Access) Bill.
Although smaller UK focused Digital Health and Life Sciences businesses would have benefited from these changes, they would have a much more limited impact on those companies operating outside the UK.
Overall, as an enabling Bill the aims are clear and loud but the detail of how reforms including the information standards and the loosening on use for automated decisions will impact how this Bill could achieve those aims.
Find out more about Osborne Clarke at osborneclarke.com
