来源：《每日电讯报》
原文刊登日期：2021年6月22日
Our medical records contain our most personal information. As Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, has put it, they belong to us, not the NHS or the Government or some far-off pharmaceutical company. But they also contain data that is of great benefit to researchers and drug manufacturers looking for the next great breakthrough in treatments for ailments ranging from cancer to Alzheimer’s.
我们的医疗记录包含了我们大部分的个人信息。正如卫生大臣马特·汉考克所说，医疗记录属于我们自己，而不是英国国家医疗服务体系（NHS）或政府或某个遥远的制药公司。但其中也包含了对研究人员和制药商大有裨益的数据，它们正在寻找治疗癌症和老年痴呆症等疾病的下一个重大突破。
Getting hold of that data has been an ambition of the state for years since extracting it and storing it became possible. A past NHS attempt to build a database was a failure, costing billions of pounds with nothing to show for it.
自从提取和存储医疗记录成为可能以来，获取这些数据一直是政府的一个雄心壮志。NHS过去建立数据库的尝试是失败的，花费了数十亿英镑却没有任何成果。
But IT improvements demonstrated by the coronavirus response have encouraged the Government to try again. Information, including medical diagnoses and other sensitive matters, will be centrally available on an anonymised basis unless the patient opts out. The deadline for doing so was originally June 23, with the system going live on July 1. After an outcry, this has been delayed until August 25, with the data mining beginning on September 1.
但应对冠状肺炎的过程中所显示的IT技术进步鼓励政府再试一次。信息，包括医疗诊断和其他敏感事项，将以匿名方式集中提供，除非患者选择退出。患者退出的最后期限原本是6月23日，系统将于7月1日上线。经过强烈抗议，这一期限被推迟到8月25日，数据挖掘将于9月1日开始。
Many people might justifiably feel they have not been encouraged to consider this matter in any depth. While a lot of ads are telling us to wear masks, socially distance and work from home there has been no public information campaign about the extraction of the medical history of every patient in England. Why not?
许多人可能有理由认为，他们没有受到鼓励来深入考虑这个问题。虽然很多广告都告诉我们要戴口罩，保持社交距离，在家工作，但没有任何关于提取英国每一个病人病史的公共信息运动。为什么没有呢？
The reason appears to be concern that large scale opt-outs would defeat the point of the exercise, yet this runs counter to Mr Hancock’s assertion that the information is ours to do with as we see fit. There are very good reasons for using Big Data to improve health care outcomes. Access to NHS data helped identify dexamethasone as an effective Covid therapy. Nor is there any inherent objection to sharing this information with companies involved in drug or vaccine production.
其原因似乎是担心有大规模的患者选择退出会破坏创建这个数据库的意义，但这与汉考克的主张相悖，汉考克认为，医疗信息应该按照自己认为合适的方式处理。使用大数据来改善医疗效果有很好的理由。获得NHS数据助力确定地塞米松是一种有效的新冠肺炎疗法。与药品或疫苗生产公司分享医疗信息也没有任何内在的反对意见。
Privacy campaigners worry that the data will be traced back to individuals, harming their employment and insurance prospects. The Government says there are sufficient safeguards to prevent this happening. But the somewhat under-the-radar way this exercise has been carried out encourages a belief that something inappropriate is taking place. Over the next two months, ministers should make a better fist of explaining why it is needed and who benefits.
隐私保护者担心这些数据会被追踪到个人身上，从而损害他们的就业和保险前景。政府说有足够的保障措施来防止这种情况发生。但这种低调的进行方式助长了一种看法，即某些不恰当的事情正在发生。在接下来的两个月里，部长们应该更好地解释为什么需要这样做以及谁将从中受益。