There is a report in Pulse that the NHS Population Demographics Service (PDS), the NHS’s online address book, has been storing door entry codes for vulnerable patients in the first line of the address. The result was that these codes were printed on envelopes for mailings, putting the patients at risk.

This is not the first problem with PDS, which is a major target for private eyes wanting to trace people as it has details on the whole population, including ex-directory phone numbers. You can opt out of having these details visible but very few people know that they can, and few GPs know to advise vulnerable patients to do this. We know of a case, for example, where a woman was tracked down and seriously assaulted by an ex-partner after he traced her through PDS; it never occurred to her doctor to opt her out.

This is how the BBC reports the Public Accounts Committee’s verdict on the NHS National Programme for IT. And here’s the Telegraph and the Guardian on the topic.

The Department of Health will not deliver the £11bn programme and has been “unable to demonstrate” any benefits for the taxpayer; parts of the national programme for IT have proved to be unworkable; there’s the prospect of the health service being tied to one software house; officials were were “unable to show what has been achieved for the £2.7bn spent to date on care records systems”; taxpayers were “clearly overpaying BT”; and there had been “deliberate concealment by the Department of Health”.

We’ve been saying this for years; see previous posts here, on the No2ID blog or on my home page.