NHS savings

[Guest]

It may be not a huge issue in the great economy of things but I have found desplicable the fact that a number of NHS providers keep on sending marketing and communications even when you ask them not to.

Shouldn't they try to make savings in this enormous broken sink that is IT applications in the NHS? Wouldn't it better if they just tried to keep data usages lean and clean instead of all these personal data exploitations allegedly to give us a "service"?

I did not consent because I am not interested in the contents and above all I do not want to share my location and other data related to the device(s) associated with my telephone number neither. This type of information is tracked by network service providers and other large organisations for purposes that nothing have to do with the provision of health services. Even if you disable the read receipt feature on your phone (that is something you may do not want to do for communications with your friends and relatives) somebody (that can just be a machine) can track your movements when you receive these messages and combine them with other data such as TFL / trains tickets and usage of credit and debit cards.

If I had been diagnosed with dementia or should I be tracked by the police I could understand that these data are used without my consent - although I find in any case desplicable that nobody informs me about the data collection and treatment and asks for my consent in any case.

I complained with surgery again.

In october I already asked my GP to make sure that I do not receive marketing messages including invitations to attend public meetings or repeated invitations for Flu and Covid boosters. GP's practice manager kindly acknowledged the request and assured they would make sure my email and phone number would not be used to continue such communications - that are not necessary for health and safety and are not sent under any public health regulation neither. Instead these are just marketing messages.

Since then, almost every day I have been receiving even more text messages of this nature from at least 4 different NHS providers identifying themselves as: council hubs, my own surgery, NHS Vaccine, hospital services. These messages come with no address to reply to and are sent with an impressive regular frequency. It looks like they come through mailing lists nobody is responsible for, always repeating messages for which I have already communicated I do not need the services offered and I have not given my consent to share my personal data.

I would like to know what people think about.

[Jenijenjen]

Don’t see it as a problem, I like to be kept informed, in fact I find it reassuring I’m being kept in the loop. It would be different if they were communicating about commercial private health-related services.