Citizens do want their health data to be harnessed for innovation

The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Sajid Javid, has recently made positive remarks about the need to invest in building public confidence towards data re-use, and while we do not yet know how this new investment will be distributed, we can hopefully be confident that the government will learn from previous mistakes and anticipate the risks current public sentiment on data sharing poses to the success of this project. What we have seen from our participation so far is that despite the current low trust in government use of data, many citizens already share the desire for health data to be harnessed in the pursuit of innovation. The NHS Confederation is currently working in partnership with public bodies in France and Belgium to run a citizen’s consultation for the public to share their views about how their health data should be collected and used.