Tara Carman reports that researchers are concerned over a halt to sharing data in the wake of reports of inappropriate access:
A freeze on access to medical data from the B.C. government has the potential to seriously undermine the health care system if it goes on too long, a prominent Vancouver medical researcher said Friday.
The government announced Thursday that it was temporarily suspending all data sharing with drug and evidence development researchers as part of an investigation into a privacy breach at the ministry that resulted in the firing of four employees and the suspension without pay of three others. The ministry also suspended $4 million in drug research contracts.
Dr. Julio Montaner, director of the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, whose researchers use such data, praised the prompt and decisive action taken by the health ministry to address the issue and said he is confident the data freeze is necessary for security reasons in the short term.
But he warned that access to such data is critically important for researchers to be able to go about their daily work monitoring the safety and efficacy of drugs.
“If because of a breach of the confidentiality issues … we’re going to stop doing what we’re doing on a long-term basis, then the safety and efficacy of the health care system that we so much appreciate will undoubtedly be compromised,” he said. “This is like saying because people speed on the highways, we close the highways.”
The Centre for Excellence compiles “tons” of confidential information about various individuals including patients, focus group participants and control subjects who are not affected by HIV, Montaner said, noting that some of this data — including sexual and drug use histories — is highly personal. To his knowledge, there has never been a privacy breach, but even if there were, it would not justify discontinuing or putting on hold the research conducted at the Centre over the long term, he said.
“I’m completely confident that the ministry and all parties involved are going to work together … to ensure that the ongoing data sharing that is critical for our work will continue, albeit with whatever additional precautions need to be taken.”
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