A CONTROVERSIAL scheme to share the health records of everyone in the country, which was piloted in Blackburn with Darwen, has been scrapped.

Minister of Life Sciences, George Freeman MP, announced the end of the care.data programme, which is estimated to have cost £7.5million.

The NHS decided to get rid of the programme in the wake of Dame Fiona Caldicott’s review.

Under the care.data scheme, the medical notes of everyone in the NHS were to be pooled in a massive central database which could be looked at by doctors, researchers and drug companies.

Over the past two years, Blackburn with Darwen Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG), along with Somerset, West Hampshire and Leeds, was a guinea pig for a plan to connect data from GPs, hospitals and other medical centres.

Many medical experts and charities supported the scheme, claiming it would help them understand the causes of disease, spot side effects to new drugs and detect patterns of outbreaks of illness.

But many patients and data protection campaigners were concerned that people were at risk of being identified.

The Department of Health was also under fire for failing to inform people they would be automatically opted into the scheme and would have to notify authorities if they wanted their medical records not included.

Many doctors also opted out their entire surgeries from the database, and the roll-out was eventually stopped in 2014.

Previously Russ McLean, chairman of the Pennine Lancashire Patient Voices Group, raised concerns about the amount of information given to people in Blackburn and Darwen about the scheme.He revealed that GPs were “up in arms” about it, saying: “Governments have an alarming frequency to lose data and is it going to be used by insurance companies to higher or lower premiums?”

Announcing the scrapping of the system, Mr Freeman said: “In light of Dame Fiona’s recommendations, NHS England has taken the decision to close the Care.data programme.

“However, wethe government and the health and care system remain absolutely committed to realising the benefits of sharing information, as an essential part of improving outcomes for patients.”

A spokesman for NHS England said: “We welcome Dame Fiona’s review because sharing data saves lives and improves care, but doing so requires maintaining patient trust on confidentiality.”