Today in healthcare: Monday 20 January

Excellent morning and welcome to the day-to-day site from the Guardian’s neighborhood for healthcare professionals, giving a roundup of the crucial information stories across the sector.

If there is a story, report or occasion you’d like to highlight – or you would like to share your ideas on any of the healthcare troubles in the information today – you can get in touch by leaving a comment under the line or tweeting us at @GdnHealthcare.

The Guardian reviews that drug and insurance coverage businesses will from later on this 12 months be ready to buy info on patients – which includes psychological health problems and conditions this kind of as cancer, as well as smoking and consuming habits – as soon as a single English database of medical data has been created. Social affairs editor Randeep Ramesh writes:

Harvested from GP and hospital records, medical information covering the total population will be uploaded to the repository managed by a new arms-length NHS information centre, starting up in March. In no way prior to has the entire medical background of the nation been digitised and stored in a single location.

Advocates say that sharing information will make health-related advances less complicated and in the end save lives because it will let researchers to investigate drug side effects or the overall performance of hospital surgical units by tracking the impact on individuals.

But privacy experts warn there will be no way for the public to perform out who has their healthcare records or to what use their data will be place. The extracted details will have NHS numbers, date of birth, postcode, ethnicity and gender.

Nick Clegg told the BBC that there is “too a lot prejudice, as well considerably discrimination” around mental health problems. The deputy prime minister stated it was “just plain incorrect” to deal with the illness as the “poor cousin” of physical well being in the NHS.

Today’s other healthcare headlines:

• Guardian: Women who avoid cervical screening exams chance their lives, say campaigners

• BBC: Patients ‘not ill enough’ for care funding

• Independent: Mental wellness risk to children trapped in ‘toxic climate’ of dieting, pornography and school tension

• eHealth Insider: Cornwall digitises children’s data

Weekend headlines

• Observer: The NHS is ‘failing to treat depressed patients’

• Guardian: Seek treatment method more quickly to keep out of hospital, patients informed

• Telegraph: Hospitals with fewer nurses on wards than Mid Staffs

Comment and analysis

On the network right now,  NHS Confederation associate director Karen Castille calls for an finish to the NHS blame culture. She writes:

Our challenge is to change our leadership model to 1 of distributive leadership. The NHS have to cease to pursue and appoint single “hero” leaders to save the day. We need to show what we want to see in other individuals by personally welcoming and encouraging criticism of ourselves, and making it secure and normal for staff and sufferers to do so.

But if the search for heroes and villains continues it will perpetuate a culture of dependency and dread, putting immense pressure on personnel – specifically these who function in organisations that are under the microscope. A damaging environment diminishes our capacity to engage completely in our function and, ultimately, influences workers morale and patient care.

Meanwhile, creating for the Conversation site, Jon Glasby says NHS employees ought to be given more credit for the fantastic function they do.

That is all for right now, we’ll be back on tomorrow with our digest of the day’s healthcare information.

Today in healthcare: Monday 20 January