NHS Forth Valley is the latest health board to bungle basic email data protection principles
A staff member sent the personal details of around 150 women who were in contact with a Scottish NHS Trust’s maternity services to their own personal email account, the Trust has revealed.NHS Forth Valley, the health board that oversees NHS services in the region between Edinburgh and Glasgow, said it is investigating the matter and has contacted the women affected.“An internal investigation is underway after a member of staff transferred a spreadsheet containing an extract of data from our maternity system to their personal email address,” a spokesperson said.
"While the majority of information in the spreadsheet is unidentifiable, it contained some lines of data relating to a number of women who had accessed local maternity services.
"There is no evidence that the information has been shared any wider at this stage, and the member of staff has also advised that they have now deleted the data.”NHS Forth Valley has contacted to data subjects directly and informed a number of other relevant organizations, including the UK Information Commissioner. A new mum who was one of the circa 150 women affected by the data mishap, told the Fakirk Herald, which first reported the story, that she was experiencing anxiety that her details were out in the public domain. The woman reportedly was told by NHS Forth Valley that the information was transferred for analytical purposes and concerned a fully qualified, non-clinical staff member, and not a junior.
