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Verteporfin photodynamic therapy for neovascular age-related ...

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122 Appendix 112. Data issues12.1 Data protectionThe Data Man<strong>age</strong>ment Centre has registered the study with the Data ProtectionOfficer at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.12.2 Data confidentialityAll data will be treated as confidential. In<strong>for</strong>mation to identify patients is required inorder to link study participants with the National NHS Register. Making this link isrequired to identify promptly patients who have died, or who have moved. Identifyingpatients who move into residential accommodation is of particular importancebecause of the societal costs of these changes in circumstances.12.3 Data securityDPs are responsible <strong>for</strong> holding their own database securely. However, it should benoted that DPs are not holding any more in<strong>for</strong>mation than they would hold anyway,<strong>for</strong> the purposes of managing and treating their patients efficiently.The Steering Committee are extremely aware of the sensitivity about transmittingidentifiable patient data outside the NHS. Two methods of data transmission arebeing used.First, submission of data from the Strategen database generates two passwordprotected and encrypted files. One contains clinical and treatment data and anarbitrary identifying code, generated by the database. A second file contains patients’names and addresses, genders, dates of birth, hospital numbers, arbitrary consultantand DP codes, but no clinical data. The first file is transmitted to Strategen, thecompany that administers the clinical database, so that the company cantroubleshoot any problems with the database that DPs experience. These data aresubsequently transmitted to the Data Man<strong>age</strong>ment Centre. The second file istransmitted directly to the Data Man<strong>age</strong>ment Centre. The Data Man<strong>age</strong>ment Centrewill transmit sufficient identifying in<strong>for</strong>mation about patients, but no clinical data, tothe Office of National Statistics to allow the patients to be identified on the NationalNHS Register.Second, a revised ‘LSHTM’ database is being implemented which allows submissionof data using SSL, the gold standard method <strong>for</strong> secure transmission which isapproved by the NHS In<strong>for</strong>mation Authority. From this database, all data are

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