Lower house wants resuscitation of SPD

"May you live in interesting times," reads an old Chinese curse. Interesting times they certainly are, even when it comes to the national Electronic Patient Record (EHR). Earlier this year, this SPD was rightly shot down by the Senate and last week definitively declared dead, since this afternoon it seems to be rising from the dead after all. Indeed, this afternoon a parliamentary majority of VVD, CDA, PvdA, D66 and SGP adopted a motion which essentially called on the government to have the part of the SPD 'at the heart of it all' (the National Switch Point, LSP) 'resuscitated' by relevant civil society parties. Telling of the democratic nature of this Frankenstein manoeuvre is the way the motion was passed: without parliamentary debate beforehand and without explanations of vote by individual parties. Only bright spot was a last-minute amendment to the text of the motion, which will still require privacy experts to be actively involved in the further course of the SPD. Unfortunately, Privacy First was unable to drag out more than this result

People who have had a near-death experience often have a very different outlook on life afterwards. Much more conscious especially. Will the same hold true for the SPD? After all, the SPD almost collapsed due to privacy and security problems, but now seems to be saved from certain death. So our hope is that the SPD (or the circle of interested parties around it) will be a lot more privacy-friendly from now on. Otherwise, things will still go wrong, for instance when next year the medical data of half the Netherlands will be accessed by a security breach end up on the street. Such a situation should be prevented with all hands. This can be done by shaping the 'LSP' regionally in line with current requirements of privacy by design, freedom of choice and transparency for patients. If asked, Privacy First will be happy to contribute to this.

The motion reads as follows: (pdf)

The Chamber,

having heard the deliberations,

noting that the relaunch of the Electronic Patient Record (EHR) is hanging by a thread, meaning that this infrastructure will most likely no longer be available from 1 January 2012,

believes that consigning this ready-to-use infrastructure to the dustbin is an undesirable step backwards in terms of quality of care, taking the healthcare sector back to the paper era,

Calls on the government to involve the relevant organisations - including patient organisations, client organisations and privacy experts - calling for the electronic health record to still get off the ground,

and moves on to the order of business.