Helen Salisbury: Is presumed consent enough for sharing medical data?

Salisbury, Helen

Before surgical procedures, especially if the patient will be unconscious, we ask for written consent, but in most other situations verbal consent is enough. If I arrange to take a blood test, I’ll paraphrase what I’m looking for: “I’m going to check that you’re not anaemic and that your liver and kidneys are working normally” is probably enough for most patients. The rationale recently given in parliament by Matt Hancock, the then secretary of state for health, mixed up the use of data for direct patient care—which is not what this project is about—and its use for research.1 He hailed the discovery of dexamethasone’s efficacy in treating covid-19 as a triumph of big data, when it was in fact the product of a rigorous, consented, randomised controlled trial.2 He was either misleading us or misunderstanding the proposals.