This appeared earlier today.
Some chemists are selling patients’ prescription information so drug companies can increase their profits
- April 12, 2015
- Sue Dunlevy National Health Reporter
- News Corp Australia Network
EXCLUSIVE
SOME chemists are selling their patients prescription information to a global health information company which sells it on to pharmaceutical companies trying to boost their sales.
Doctor and consumer groups have expressed outrage about the practice they fear may impinge on patient privacy.
After News Corp drew the Department of Health’s attention to the profit making venture it asked the Privacy Commissioner to investigate.
The Australian Privacy Commissioner Timothy Pilgrim warned chemists against a similar prescription data for profit arrangement in 2013 that involved linking doctors names to the data.
“I am concerned about whether pharmacies will be complying with their obligations under the Privacy Act should collection activities commence,” he told the Pharmacy Guild of Australia.
While the name the doctor scheme did not go ahead the Australian general manager of health information giant IMS, Andrew Sutton has confirmed his company is collecting patients prescription data.
“We do have arrangements with pharmacists to get prescription information,” Mr Sutton told News Corp.
“The purpose is to help us understand how patients and doctors are using medicine in the real world to help our clients, primarily pharmaceutical companies, to get market aligned outcomes,” he said.
Mr Sutton says the information is “all fully encrypted and the anonymous information is not linked to physicians or patients,” he told News Corp.
Mr Sutton said he could not reveal how much chemists were making for selling the information to his company.
“It’s in the hundreds of dollars at a pharmacy level,” he said.
A spokeswoman for the Privacy Commissioner said he had not been informed about the latest arrangement with IMS.
“We requested IMS Health to advise the Office of the Australian Information Commisisoner if it recommenced this program. We have not received any information from IMS Health about the recommencement of this program,” the spokesman said.
The Pharmacy Guild of Australia says it has no involvement with the IMS arrangement and its policy on data collection by thrid parties tells chemists:
“No third party should have access to consumer data unless it is de-identified and for a clear and approved purpose that complies with privacy laws and other relevant standards”.
Lots more (with colourful pictures) is found here:
There are three points to be made with this:
1. Big Pharma would not be paying for this information if it was not very valuable to them.
2. Lots of studies have shown that anonymised data mostly isn’t - especially using advanced data mining techniques.
3. Not alerting patients to the harvesting of their data is just unethical - that is totally clear cut in my view.
So much for all the claims of Pharmacists being such perfect professionals that they deserve not to have the real world of deregulation start to bring them into the 21st Century via the Harper Review. I am not sure we see many other clinicians selling their patient information without individual consent and ethics review - if indeed any of them sell patient information at all.
It is interesting the same issue is live in the UK at the same time and has now been scuppered!
Pharmacy 2U investigated for data sale
2 April 2015 Thomas Meek
An online pharmacy part-owned by clinical software supplier Emis has come under fire for selling the data of some customers to a marketing firm.
An investigation by the Daily Mail claims that Pharmacy2U gave personal details to direct marketing agency Alchemy Direct Media, whose clients include health charities and pharmaceutical companies.
According to the Mail, names and addresses of people who requested online consultations through the site, and who used Pharmacy 2U “to place their GP prescriptions and have them delivered to their home address”, were passed on.
Pharmacy 2U says on its website that it has “provided a convenient NHS mail-order repeat prescription service for more than a decade.”
Patients can also “nominate” the pharmacy as part of the Electronic Prescription Service Release 2 which is finally rolling out across the country, and which is destined to become the centre-piece of a new “click and collect” or “click and deliver” service in the future.
However, the Mail claims the terms and conditions for online prescriptions do not cover information being passed to third parties, which is “only stated in the small print of the website’s privacy policy.”
In a statement to EHI News, Pharmacy2U said the allegations related to a two-month trial project at the end of last year that involved the sale of customers’ names and postal addresses for use in selected marketing activity.
“Data was only shared where there was patient consent,” said the company. “No medical information, emails or telephone numbers were sold. In conducting this trial project, we acted in line with current data protection and ICO [Information Commissioner’s Office] guidelines.”
Despite these assurances Pharmacy2U said it will no longer share customer data for use in third party marketing and that all data that was held by Alchemy has been destroyed.
Lots more here:
Seems others agree with me and believe this simply should not be happening!
David.
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