International
Not only in Germany, but worldwide, a growing number of doctors, other professionals, citizens, and civil rights organizations form a movement against threats to privacy, especially those regarding health information.
Here's a preliminary list of fellow initiatives worldwide:
Austria
We are a group of concerned citizens (patients and professionals), who try to alleviate some consequences of the federal project "ELGA" (electronic health record) via information and timely clarification of facts. We learned that this is not only a technical or a medical, but foremost a social and a political topic. And we decided to showcase this topic: independent, impartial and fearless.
GPs from Austria ranting about their health card system.
Germany
A broad movement of campaigners and organizations is calling on everybody to join action against excessive surveillance by governments and businesses. On 11 October 2008, concerned people in many countries will take to the streets, the motto being "Freedom not fear 2008". Peaceful and creative action, from protest marches to parties, will take place in many capital cities.
Great Britain
- The Big Opt Out (10.2.2015: offline)
"The NHS Confidentiality campaign was set up to protect patient confidentiality and to provide a focus for patient-led opposition the government’s NHS Care Records System. This system is designed to be a huge national database of patient medical records and personal information (sometimes referred to as the NHS ’spine’) with no opt-out mechanism for patients at all. It is being rolled out during 2007, and is objectionable for many of the same reasons as the government’s proposed ID database."
"Founded in January 2013 by a number of existing organisations – Privacy International, Big Brother Watch, NO2ID, FIPR, TheBigOptOut, Terri Dowty (former Director of ARCH) and Phil Booth (former National Coordinator of NO2ID) – medConfidential began as a direct response to the imminent and serious threat posed by radical changes* in the way two new arms-length bodies, the NHS Commissioning Board (‘NHS England’) and the Health and Social Care Information Centre (HSCIC), planned to extract and pass on patients’ medical information from NHS health record systems in England. Incorporated in April 2013 as a company limited by guarantee with charitable objects, medConfidential is an independent, non-partisan organisation working with patients and medics, service users and care professionals, drawing advice from a network of experts in the fields of health informatics, computer security, law/ethics and privacy."
The Netherlands
For over more than four years, a group of extremely concerned psychiatrists, clinical psychologists, psychotherapists, legal professionals, and interested laymen have been discussing these developments. The State, the ICT-branch and The Health Insurance Branch not only tell full scale lies, but avoid direct answers to direct questions, create mist and obscurity and meanwhile carry on unrestrained, hereby legitimized by constantly compromising members of government, in both Eerste and Tweede Kamer. We believe that the time has come that the Public should genuinely be enlightened on these issues. By means of this website, we briefly try to explain the potential dangers of digitization in Mental Health Care in general, and in psychotherapy in particular. Alongside, we offer background information to those interested.
We are a group of worried psychiatrists and psychotherapists in the Netherlands who decided to take legal steps against the intrusive government rulings and healtcare insurance companies who are slowly but forcefully raping the citizens / patients constitutional rights to the preservation of their privacy. Now we are engaging in a legal procedure against the same Authority at the Court of Appeal. This will be the first evaluation by a judge. Our foundation is the only organised group in the Netherlands who is defending the patients privacy rights in court. In case the judge would not abide with our arguments we already made clear we will immediately claim our rights at the European Court of Civil Rights in Strassbourg. Our legal advisors are convinced that the new regulations are in conflict with relevant legislation in the European Convention of Human Rights.
