ANY OF US who has their personal data kept by a public body is entitled to believe maximum effort is being made to keep it confidential.

That is true in all areas of life, but none more so than when it concerns details about our health.

Which is why it is disturbing for the

Journal

to reveal this week that Northern Devon Healthcare Trust has recorded 18 incidents in the past year of confidential patient data being lost by members of its staff.

Thankfully, it appears on the face of it that these 18 incidents did not cause serious inconvenience to the patients affected and they were all contacted and informed of the loss so they were aware what had happened.

Of course any organisation which employs a large number of people is going to witness the occasional mistake in its processes and procedures and it looks in most cases concerning the Trust that there was nothing sinister about the data loss - it was just human error which led to it.

But public bodies must, surely, make maximum effort when it comes to the collation, storage and transport of public data to ensure that safeguards are in place to overcome as much as possible the possibility of such errors?

The

Journal

does not wish to complicate the role of managers and administrators at the Trust any more than we have to but, seeing that the majority of these blunders appear to involve paperwork or files being mislaid, surely it might be prudent to assess how much paper data should be transferred around?

In this era of portable PCs and devices, surely attempts should be made to digitise the majority of data records for patients and then ensure it is properly protected with passwords so that even if the inevitable human error occurs then the risk is minimised?