Ministers have scrapped plans that would have granted researchers access to identifiable medical records without patient consent after an uproar among GPs over patient confidentiality.
A passage included in the draft NHS Constitution, which could have granted researchers unrestricted access to patient data, has been dropped from the final document.
The Department of Health confirmed to Pulse that the omission would prevent researchers from having the level of access to data originally proposed, claiming the passage in question had ‘led to misunderstanding’ over its plans.
Read more in Pulse