This is actually a bigger problem in the UK (no longer in the EU). NHS England has been trying repeatedly to make huge amounts of NHS data available to various

This is actually a bigger problem in the UK (no longer in the EU). NHS England has been trying repeatedly to make huge amounts of NHS data available to various kinds of commercial "partners". It started with supplying the Society Of Actuaries with the records of a million patients. For £3,000! Actuaries, of course, are primarily employed by insurance companies - not the kind of people I want having access to my medical data. We were given the chance to opt out; you had to get and complete the official form from your GP, and go to the clinic and hand it in. But it turned out that only covered your GP's records; hospital records were subject to a different opt-out. You had to ask for a form from your local Health Trust, complete that, and mail it in. None of this was electronic or online. Then there was a new plan, all your old opt-outs were obsoleted, and you had to go through the whole rigmarole again. The UK has the finest collection of medical data in the world; a population of 70 million, and a consolidated health service dating back 80 years. No other country has this. I have no problem with that data being used by the NHS to improve existing treatments and develop new treatments. But handing it over for peanuts to J. Arthur Random really isn't on. There are evidently civil servants in NHS England who are fanatical about sharing NHS data for commercial profit, even if that profit doesn't accrue to the NHS.