Surveillance of disease is essential to protect and promote public health. Information from routine patient consultations is used to identify hazards and control the spread of infections and disease. But health surveillance relies entirely on prompt and accurate reporting of the occurrence of disease by doctors and other health professionals.
In the light of recent guidelines, some authorities have questioned whether doctors should share data of public health importance that could potentially identify patients without either obtaining the patients’ explicit consent or totally anonymising the data.
Drawing from examples from child health, the authors explain how routine surveillance protects health. Certain restrictions (for example, always asking patient or parent permission before passing on data) would so damage surveillance procedures that they would cease to protect the health of the public, resulting in preventable ill health and deaths.
They argue that the medical profession needs to do more to inform the public about the important ways in which information about individual patients is used to protect health.
They conclude that those responsible for developing guidelines on patient confidentiality and consent, and for advising doctors, must recognise the public health duties of doctors and consider issues related to health surveillance so that the health of the public is not put at risk.