Society for Social Medicine and the International Epidemiological Association European Group. Abstracts of oral presentations

Abstract

3921 adults randomly selected from across Great Britain were interviewed. Subjects were asked to assess a selection of 10 out of 200 vignettes. Each vignette contained four elements: a category of individual; access to some or all of the health record; specified purpose; and level of patient identifier. Subjects were asked to say how happy they would be to allow access to their health record in the circumstances described. The public were generally happy to provide access to health information. For almost a third of vignettes, subjects said that they would be very happy to allow access to their health information. 9.1% of subjects said that they would be very happy to allow access within all of the vignettes that they were asked to assess. There was however, a significant minority of responses (11.6%) to vignettes where subjects said that they would be very unhappy to allow access. In addition 2.1% of individuals said that they were very unhappy with all of the vignettes presented to them. Individuals from higher social groups, older people and males were more likely to be happy with access to their health information. The individual requesting information was the most important factor determining permission to access health information. Subjects were happier to release anonymised rather than personally identifiable data. Content of the information to be released did not seem to be that important, even when the health record contained sensitive information. With the exception of teaching students, the use of the information wasn't an important determinant of consent. Despite a level of support for use of health information in most circumstances, this doesn't mean that patients don't want to be asked for consent, nor that the views of the small minority can be ignored. The ethical and policy implications of these findings will be discussed. Background: It is well documented that smokers have increased mortality and morbidity. However, little is known about the possible impact of smoking on duration of chronic disease until death. Objective: To present a new statistical method for estimating median survival time and median disease-free survival time, based on data from a prospective study, and to use this method to analyse the impact of smoking on disease duration until death. Methods: The method is relevant for prospective studies where at least 25%-but less than 50%-of the patients have died during the study period. Further, at least 40% of the subjects must be diseased or