Home Office refuses to enforce privacy code on NHS staff using video

The government has rejected a request by the surveillance camera watchdog to allow it to monitor the increasing and unregulated use of body-worn video cameras in hospitals.

The cameras, which record sound as well as images, are being increasingly deployed in hospitals in an effort to tackle abuse of frontline health service staff.

On Wednesday, it emerged that surveillance camera commissioner Tony Porter had warned ministers last year that the privacy of millions of NHS patients was put at risk by the unchecked use of the cameras.

In a call backed by privacy campaigners, Porter recommended adding NHS trusts to a list of public bodies required to comply with a code of practice on the use of surveillance in effort to promote greater transparency and accountability.

Now the Home Office, the department to which Porter reports, has rejected the requests.

A letter to Porter sent last week from the home office minister, Brandon Lewis, and released by the government on Wednesday, said the recommendation was unnecessary as: “We had not exhausted the possibilities of increasing voluntary compliance.”

In letter in November, also released on Wednesday, Porter warned that the voluntary approach had twice been rejected by NHS Protect, the body responsible for hospital security, “on the ground that they could not enforce compliance”.

Porter’s letter added: “Despite our best attempts, voluntary adoption has not worked … and it will difficult without government intervention.”

Under the code, which is overseen by Porter as the surveillance camera commissioner, public bodies such as the police must demonstrate a “pressing need” for the use of surveillance cameras, and warn the public of their use and how images will be stored and used. Porter, a former senior counter-terrorism officer, has been working with the police to ensure how public privacy can be protected as forces roll out body-worn video for frontline officers. He wants to do the same in the NHS.

In his November letter, Porter warned Lewis that he was becoming increasingly concerned about the use of surveillance in the NHS.

He said: “The NHS trusts are complex organisations that use surveillance camera systems in public areas where people under surveillance are likely to be vulnerable and distressed, and where the privacy requirements and burden on those conducting transparent, legitimate and proportionate surveillance is surely at its highest.”

It pointed out that millions of people use hospitals each year, and added: “The introduction of body-worn video cameras at several hospitals has increased my concerns. Body-worn video cameras are a particularly intrusive device as they capture audio and video simultaneously without the option of switching either off whilst recording.”

Porter said the government’s decision to allow surveillance to go unchecked in the NHS raised a series of questions about the privacy of patients.

In a statement to the Guardian, he said: “Surveillance cameras play an important role in maintaining public and staff safety, preventing and resolving crimes. Yet in the healthcare sector they are not subject to scrutiny and standards, and therefore can we be reassured that they are fit for purpose and are doing what they are meant to be doing?

“Are we sure that security officers using body-worn video are doing so without invading an individual’s right to privacy when they may be at their most vulnerable? NHS Protect have twice rejected recommending that trusts adopt the surveillance camera code of practice as it’s not mandatory for them – the code is designed to ensure cameras are used effectively, transparently and efficiently to protect individuals’ freedoms.

“In the absence of any mandate to adopt the code, I’m continuing to work with government to look at how we can encourage NHS trusts and hospitals to voluntarily adopt the surveillance camera code of practice.”

Daniel Nesbitt, research director at Big Brother Watch, urged ministers to heed Porter’s warning.

He said: “The government shouldn’t be standing in the way of effective oversight. The NHS controls a large number of CCTV cameras and the public have to be able to trust they will use them properly.

“Giving the surveillance camera commissioner the power to oversee how trusts use their cameras should be a no-brainer.”

Home Office refuses to enforce privacy code on NHS staff using video

How long will you live? That depends on your zip code | Celine Gounder

Where you live in America predicts not just how long you’ll live but also how you’ll die. The “Black Lung mountains” run along the border of West Virginia and Kentucky. They are the epicenter of the so-called “hillbilly heroin” epidemic. In the lower Mississippi there’s “Cancer Alley” and heart attack valley. Violent deaths lead the list in the Far West, Alaska and Native American reservations. When it comes to health, one thing is clear: the US is not one nation. It is many.

In an analysis of 80 million deaths in the United States between 1980 and 2014, a study published on Tuesday finds dramatic differences not only in life expectancy, but also in cause of death from county to county. “We’re not narrowing the gap. The gap is widening,” said Christopher J L Murray, one of the authors of the study.

Their analysis shows that our health differs by geography as well as race, socioeconomic status and political culture. One particular hotspot has emerged: the border between Kentucky and West Virginia. The region is plagued by not only mental illness and substance abuse – which have received much attention in the media – but also chronic lung disease, cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, motor vehicle accidents and common infections like diarrhea and pneumonia.

In Appalachia, many of the largest coal deposits have been exhausted. To access the smaller deposits, miners have to blast through a lot more rock, not just coal. All that blasting releases more dust and more toxic dust into the air. The result has been that between 2000 and 2012, there was a nine-fold increase in the most severe form of Black Lung.

As jobs have evaporated, diseases of poverty are exploding along the Kentucky-West Virginia border. Deaths from common infections have gone up in and along the Kentucky-West Virginia border as well as in the lower Mississippi Valley. Deaths from cardiovascular disease and diabetes are also up.

If environmental protections are further weakened and the Affordable Care Act is dismantled – and with it Medicaid expansion in Kentucky and West Virginia – the health of the region may well sink further.

The lower Mississippi is another death hotspot, most notably the Arkansas-Mississippi border and Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley,” but also extending towards Missouri, Oklahoma and Alabama. Like Appalachia, the Deep South is anti-union and anti-regulation; just swap coal mining for the oil, gas and petrochemical industries, and many of the same factors are at play. As in Appalachia, environmental contamination is driving higher rates of cancer and lung disease.

More than elsewhere in the country, social class in the Deep South is taken as evidence for what one deserves in life—also known as the just-world hypothesis—so it’s no surprise that support for social safety nets, including the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid, are weakest here. Arkansas is the only state in the Deep South to have expanded Medicaid. Along with the southwest and Alaska, the Deep South has the highest proportions of uninsured – this causes diseases of poverty to flourish.

While poor white and black Americans both have worse health in the Deep South than in most other parts of the country, black people also continue to suffer from racial discrimination and segregation. In earlier research, Murray showed that poor black Americans in the Deep South and in cities with high homicide rates have the highest mortality rates in the country.

Race creates a geography of its own – especially when you factor in residential segregation. According to David R Williams, a social science researcher at Harvard University “For many Americans, your zip code is a stronger predictor of how long and how well you will live than your genetic code.”

Research on the geography of health will help local health departments focus on the most urgent health problems and will arm citizens with the data they need to advocate for better health in their communities. But it’s important to remember that the geography of health is intertwined with the local political culture and local economy.

Not only do diseases vary county to county (and on an even more micro level), but solutions that may have worked to curb disease in one region—environmental and occupational regulations, for example—may not be palatable elsewhere without fundamental changes in the local culture and how people make a living.

In this age of inequality, none of the symptoms of our malaise can be ignored without consequence. It is up to us all to find out why some Americans are so much worse off than their compatriots – and close the gap fast.

How long will you live? That depends on your zip code | Celine Gounder

Your 5 Year Old Can Learn To Code With An IPad App

The MIT Media Lab just lately released ScratchJr, a cost-free iPad app that helps children five-eight find out how to code. The app is a collaboration among the MIT Media Lab, Tufts University, and Playful Invention Firm (PICO).

The unique Scratch programming language is presently employed by millions of older kids, but it was also complex for younger youngsters. The Scratch team redesigned the interface, simplifying it in order to make it more accessible to younger little ones.

I downloaded ScratchJr and then handed the iPad to my 6 12 months outdated. He was instantaneously engaged. Whilst he was playing–creating stories via an interface that teaches the essentials of coding–I shot an email to Mitchel Resnick, one of the creators of Scratch. I wanted to discover a little much more about the contemplating behind ScratchJr.

The following is the conversation between Mitchel and me. We cover scratch, literacy, perform, expression,and early childhood creativity.

Jordan Shapiro: Scratch and ScratchJr are digital apps that introduce young children to simple coding via a easy drag and drop interface. I’ve witnessed some young men and women produce fairly amazing factors with the authentic Scratch: building their own video games, making short films, even producing truly engaging animated presentations. It is excellent since it is simultaneously silly and critical. ScratchJr is a brand new iPad app aimed at younger little ones. Can you make clear how and why you designed Scratch in the first area? Also, tell us about particularly about ScratchJr How is it different? Why is it essential?

Mitchel Resnick: My investigation group at the MIT Media Lab spends a great deal of time operating with younger individuals. We noticed that several younger men and women wished to develop their personal interactive stories, video games, and animations, but conventional programming languages were not made with little ones in mind. There was clearly a require for a new type of programming language. At the same time, we knew that finding out to program would be a rich learning experience for younger men and women. So we produced Scratch to meet a need — but also to provide new learning options.

We created Scratch for ages eight and up. But we believed that younger young children would also get pleasure from (and benefit from) studying to program. So we determined to build ScratchJr for young children ages five to 7. We teamed up with Marina Bers, a professor of youngster improvement at Tufts University, and we redesigned the Scratch interface and programming language to make them developmentally acceptable for younger youngsters, cautiously creating attributes to match youthful children’s cognitive, personal, social, and emotional development.

JS: You lead the MIT Media Lab’s Lifelong Kindergarten Investigation Group. I’ve often loved the identify. I’m guessing that most individuals hear “kindergarten,” believe about finger painting and physique tracings, and picture it is all about childish irreverence. In fact, kindergarten, carried out effectively, is truly way a lot more structured than that perform is the rigorous perform of youthful men and women. Kindergarten ought to supply playful methods for little ones to experientially understand the building blocks of rational pondering and meaningful articulation. ScratchJr introduces algorithmic thinking to youthful little ones in a innovative way. Kids go by means of the standard motions of coding even even though they really don’t always realize it. You have explained that Scratch and Scratch Jr. are not only about “learning to code,” but also about “coding to understand.” Can you briefly clarify what you mean by that? What are some of the vital non-STEM abilities that children can understand from Scratch and ScratchJr?

MR: As children code with Scratch and ScratchJr, they find out methods for solving problems, creating projects, and communicating concepts. They find out how to divide complicated issues into easier elements, how to iteratively refine and improve their function, how to remix and build on the perform of other people, how to persevere in the encounter of problems. These skills are crucial for absolutely everyone, not just folks who will grow up to become scientists, engineers, or pc scientists.

JS: A few many years ago, I wrote a book called FREEPLAY: A Video Game Guide To Greatest Euphoric Bliss. I argued that video video games are the mythology of the potential. But I was genuinely getting at anything a lot far more standard: that the way humans inform stories, transmit details, and practice persuasive rhetoric is fundamentally shifting from a leading-down organization to a participatory 1. In other words, storytelling, narrative, and expository communication are all increasingly turning out to be interactive, algorithmic, and non-linear. It takes place to me that with Scratch and ScratchJr you are supplying a platform on which young children can get started to produce and practice the foundational expertise (and also a way of contemplating about communication) that will be critical in a globe that we can only just begin to imagine. Is it honest to say that Scratch and ScratchJr assist to immersively teach the grammar and syntax of an emerging sort of rhetoric?

MR: I see coding as an extension of creating. The capacity to code makes it possible for you to “write” new types of items – interactive stories, games, animations, and simulations. When men and women find out to compose, they can share their tips with the rest of the world. So also with coding. Get a look in the Scratch on-line neighborhood and you will uncover animated stories, virtual excursions, science simulations, public-services announcements, multimedia art projects, on-line newsletters, interactive tutorials, and a lot a lot more.

JS: These days, every person would seem to be saying that coding is the ‘new literacy.’ To be truthful, I uncover that a small absurd. For a single thing, there are many different kinds of essential literacies and we need to get out of the mindset that any one is a lot more important than the other folks. Also, there is practically nothing ‘new’ about the computational pondering that coding requires. It dates back at least to 8th century Persia (but was currently practiced by ancient Greek and Egyptian philosophers). It is important, even so, that new digital technologies enable us to use this sort of thinking in really efficient approaches. With these tools, we can out of the blue apply this thinking in approaches we never could have imagined achievable in the past. But that includes shifting our viewpoint so that we can understand and see the new choices. Scratch and ScratchJr put a simplified version of these technologies into the hands of very youthful kids so that they can understand, experiment, and perform, in a useful way, with computational contemplating. I may well not call it the “new literacy,” but I do think every single youngster need to be exposed to this kind of perform. Why do you consider this is this so critical? Why is play a single of the very best methods to learn content in context?

MR: I’d like to comment on two themes in your question: “computational thinking” and “play”.

In current many years, several individuals have emphasized the significance of “computational pondering.” I agree that comprehending personal computer concepts can give a framework for comprehending many kinds of techniques and processes in the globe. But I truly feel that folks have a tendency to overlook and undervalue the relevance of “computational expression.” When you learn to code, you really do not just discover new methods of considering, but new techniques of expressing by yourself and sharing your suggestions.

For me, “play” is not just an activity (like “playing a game”) but a type of interacting with the globe. A playful technique includes trying new factors, testing boundaries, taking hazards, exploring what’s attainable, iterating once more and once again. A playful approach is important for creativity and innovation — and creativity is much more crucial in today’s globe than ever just before.

JS: The Lifelong Kindergarten Analysis Group’s mission is to nurture “a planet full of playfully creative individuals who are continually inventing new possibilities for themselves and their communities.” Scratch and ScratchJr do this via early hands-on exposure to coding and computational contemplating. I enjoy the way this function manifests: support people achieve fluency with new technologies and concurrently empower them to do the simple function of human civilization inside of a modern day context. Primarily, it looks to be all about supplying innovative opportunities for creative perform. Your perform reminds me that even though we are nevertheless enjoying in the identical sandbox, if we continually update the buckets and the shovels, we may well even find out that the sand looks and behaves in a different way. Inform us about one or two of the other tasks and how they complete the same mission.  

MR: For several many years, we have collaborated with the LEGO Business on the layout of new robotics kits, like LEGO Mindstorms and LEGO WeDo. Just as Scratch and ScratchJr give options for youthful folks to layout, create, and invent in the online planet, LEGO robotics kits give possibilities for youthful men and women to layout, develop, and invent in the bodily globe. In the process, youthful folks understand to think creatively, purpose systematically, and work collaboratively — vital capabilities for achievement in today’s globe.

In collaboration with the Boston Museum of Science, my research group co-founded the Personal computer Clubhouse undertaking, an global network of soon after-school finding out centers the place youthful men and women from reduced-revenue communities find out to express themselves creatively with new technologies. As they work on projects, Clubhouse members turn into far more capable, confident, and creative learners. With assistance from the Intel Foundation, the Computer Clubhouse Network has expanded to a hundred areas in 20 nations, serving roughly 20,000 young folks every single 12 months. Our preliminary inspirations for Scratch came by means of our interactions with youthful men and women at Laptop Clubhouses.

With my colleagues Phillip Schmidt and Natalie Rusk, we have been creating an on-line course, called “Learning Imaginative Learning,” to share our concepts with other people (http://discover.media.mit.edu). We view the program as an experimental option to traditional Substantial Open On the web Programs (MOOCs), placing higher emphasis on peer-to-peer learning, hands-on projects, and sustainable communities.

JS: Is there anything else you want to tell us about either ScratchJr or the Lifelong Kindergarten Analysis Group?

MR: In our Lifelong Kindergarten Research Group, we have been establishing a conceptual framework for our method to understanding and training. We have recognized 4 guiding ideas, which we occasionally call the 4 P’s of Imaginative Finding out:

• 
  Tasks. Individuals find out greatest when they are actively functioning on meaningful projects – producing new concepts, developing prototypes, refining iteratively.


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  Peers. Studying flourishes as a social activity, with folks sharing suggestions, collaborating on tasks, and constructing on a single another’s operate.


• 
  Passion. When men and women work on tasks they care about, they perform longer and more difficult, persist in the encounter of issues, and discover more in the approach.


• 
  Play. Finding out entails playful experimentation – trying new issues, tinkering with supplies, testing boundaries, taking hazards, iterating again and yet again.

Jordan Shapiro is writer of FREEPLAY: A Video Game Manual to Maximum Euphoric Bliss, and MindShift’s Guidebook To Video games And Learning For details on Jordan’s approaching books and events click here.

Your 5 Year Old Can Learn To Code With An IPad App

New pharmaceutical conduct code under fire for not going far enough

Up to date drug company transparency suggestions will not deter doctors from accepting 1000′s of dollars which probably influence their prescribing habits, the peak entire body representing healthcare buyers says.

The Buyers Wellness Forum chief executive, Adam Stankevicius, stated pharmaceutical code of perform reforms proposed by the business physique Medicines Australia did not go far enough to give consumers confidence in the medicines they had been prescribed.

The guidelines will for the first time force pharmaceutical firms to disclose how much they invest on individual medical doctors, but people medical doctors can decide on to stay anonymous.

The expenditure on the unidentified medical professionals would rather be reported as a complete figure alongside the number of physicians it relates to. Buyers going on-line to find payments made to person medical professionals would be in a position to uncover only individuals who had consented to the data currently being made public.

“As a end result, senior medical authorities will nevertheless be in a position to receive tens of thousands of dollars in speakers’ costs, sponsored travel and other perks from a drug firm in return for providing talks about that company’s merchandise, without having these individual practitioner payments being disclosed,” Stankevicius said.

“Such undisclosed perks and remuneration undermine the independence of healthcare practitioners and the confidence of consumers in relation to medicines prescribing.”

Individuals should know if medical doctors were getting perks from the organizations that manufactured the medicines their doctors prescribed to them, he stated. “The code should need that practitioners forgo or repay payments from drug businesses if they are not ready to be named as recipients.

“One can reasonably question why the pharmaceutical sector would shell out millions of dollars a 12 months to Australia’s health care practitioners, if they are not expecting some return on that investment.”

But Medicines Australia chief executive Dr Brendan Shaw said the tips reflected best practice and had been created on the advice of the Australian privacy commissioner.

“[He] confirmed that it is best practice for a healthcare skilled to be asked for their consent just before personalized details relating to payments and transfers of value from pharmaceutical companies is published,” Shaw explained.

“Other legal authorities have suggested that businesses should obtain permission from doctors as a end result of commonwealth privacy legislation. We want to perform with the professions and health-related groups to inspire healthcare experts to supply consent.”

He mentioned relations in between pharmaceutical companies and healthcare experts had been suitable and useful, and that physicians ought to have no cause to want to hide that data.

“The pharmaceutical market and healthcare professional organisations previously every single encourage ethical collaboration, by way of self-regulatory codes of practice and guidelines,” he explained. “It is important that the two the business and healthcare professionals can demonstrate that these relationships are acceptable and ethical.”

The reforms would also allow up to $ 120 to be invested on a meal and beverages for personal medical doctors at occasions. “This greatest would only be suitable in exceptional circumstances, such as a dinner at a realized society conference with significant educational content material,” the recommendations say.

The transparency reforms have been submitted to the Australian Competitors and Client Commission for authorisation, a approach which will take up to 6 months.

If authorised they will get effect early next 12 months and apply to all Medicines Australia members, who provide virtually 90% of medicines accessible to patients.

New pharmaceutical conduct code under fire for not going far enough