Harry Cayton, Chair of the National Information Governance Board for Health and Social Care, was on the show to defend the electronic records system. However, he acknowledged that - while it might be good to improve security - this is in the process of being rolled out: in other words, they are installing the system before adequate security measures are in place. Cayton emphasised that an audit trail would allow people abusing the system to access records inappropriately to be caught after the fact - but, by the time certain sensitive information is out, it could be too late.

To be blunt, listening to the programme gave me a nice clear sense of how I could get a temp job at my local hospital, access any patient records I was curious about, and then be gone before anyone noticed. This wouldn't require great hacking skills: so far as I could tell, it would just require basic computer skills and the ability to tick an 'admin' box. This is rather worrying.

To make things worse, there is no apparent way to opt out of the system and issues of consent are extremely muddy. The NHS psychiatrist Dr Hashim Reza argues that "[l]egally, it is patients' privilege, and it is my duty to write" a patient's electronic record, and a patient choosing to sit in the doctor's waiting room is seen as "implied consent". If one cannot turn an offer down, I am not sure that it counts as a privilege.