Tony Blair Institute Hosts Controversial Panel on Health Data Commercialization

The Tony Blair Institute for Global Change and My Life My Say charity co-hosted the Future of Britain Conference 2024 and heard Blair organization’s director of health policy, Charlotte Refsum, and other panelists speak in favor of more commercialization and surveillance of health data.

This was one of several controversial issues covered during the event, along two main lines – more surveillance of various types, and combating “disinformation.”

Blair Institute’s choice of organizing partner is telling, as well, since My Life My Say, which focuses on getting young people out to vote, lists the UK Cabinet Office and US embassy in London, as well as the mayor of London, as its past partners or backers.

Regarding health data, Refsum urged the creation of digital health records for all citizens, as well as a private commercial entity dubbed, “national data trust” – that would be tasked with commercializing access to sensitive health data in the country, and generate revenue in that way.

Blair himself was less straightforward, as a politician does, but appears to be pushing for digital health records and national data trust. But he appeared somewhat evasive when Refsum asked him about a digital health record and a national data trust, speaking about the benefits of technology in general, in terms of health.

Wellcome, another charitable foundation with ties to the UK government – the Department of Health and Social Care – would like to see the National Health Service (NHS) “integrate all the data” it has to achieve a “learning population health system.”

This is according to Wellcome’s Dr. John-Arne Rottingen who is also a fan of “faster intelligence” and reaching this goal by feeding massive amounts of data into the schemes.

Rottingen, who is Norwegian, spoke about what he considers a positive example of Scandinavian countries that have already linked access to health data “across the full population.”

In contrast to his learning population health system, is the current state of affairs where this information is “locked in different parts of the system,” noted Rottingen.

He urged researchers in the UK to enter public-private partnerships in order to come up with “insights” that are supposed to provide the driving force for a future “sustainable healthcare system.”