WRITTEN ON December 14th, 2007 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Data nitwittery, Foundation of Trust, What do we want?

Another day, anther “isolated incident”, reported by the Beeb:

The details of up to 3,000 NHS patients could have been on a computer stolen from a doctors’ surgery. The laptop containing patients’ names, addresses, dates of birth and phone numbers was taken from the surgery in Newport on 5 November.

As well as the usual “swelling numbers” aspect this report has the added distinction that it includes a leak of biometric details:

Initially Cardiff and Vale NHS Trust chief executive Hugh Ross announced 950 diabetic patients had definitely been affected by the incident. They were taking part in a screening service for people with eye problems. But Mr Ross later told BBC Wales’s Dragon’s Eye programme that information about as many as 2,000 or 3,000 patients could be on the laptop. The trust said the computer did not contain any national insurance numbers or medical information, but a link to a picture of patients’ retinas was stored on it.

Perhaps the Cardiff and Vale NHS Trust will be offering free retina transplants to any patients affected by the loss. Mr Ross went on to complete the archetypal essentials for data niwittery:

“I would like to offer a sincere apology to all patients affected by this theft and reassure them that there are very strong security measures on all our IT systems to prevent confidential information being accessed. This is an isolated incident and we are taking immediate action to try and ensure that it does not happen again.”

Hurrah. There will be a review. Meet the new procedures, same as the old procedures. Nothing like this will ever happen again!

Seriously though, by the time they introduce the ID System there will be so much personal data sloshing around the bottom will have dropped out of the market. All the crooks and sleepers who applied to work as IPS registration officers might as well resign now.