The Guardian reports the U.K. Department of Health and Social Care has struck deals to send National Health Service patient data to several pharmaceutical companies for research purposes. The companies paid up to 330,000 GBP to acquire the anonymized data. Privacy advocates have argued the deals lack transparency on what data is being transferred. "Patients should know how their data is used. There should be no surprises. While legitimate research for public health benefit is to be encouraged, it must always be consensual, safe and properly transparent," medConfidential Coordinator Phil Booth said.
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