Monday night’s ITV investigative reporting show ‘Tonight’ investigated the sale of British medical records offshore in India. Reporter Chris Rogers demonstrated how confidential details of private medical consultations could be purchased from criminals in India.

Investigating for the programme, Rogers was able to obtain a ‘taster’ of 100 medical records after indicating an intention to purchase and a further 10,000 were offered if he could come to India in person to close the deal. Through his enquiries he found details could be purchased and was offered prices of £4 and $25 per individual record. All of the data was found to come from private clinics and none was determined to have come from the NHS.

In response to this revelation Mark Kobayashi Hillary, NOA Offshoring Director commented: “It’s useful for programmes like Tonight to be exposing these crimes, but not to disparage a largely trusted and successful outsourcing and offshoring industry. It’s important that this is understood to be a data crime, not an offshoring crime.”

He continued, “ The Indian service industry will probably feel slighted that they were chosen for yet another sting operation by a British journalist, but then India is an easy target, having such a large and successful IT and business process outsourcing market. But, the fact is that this problem is not dependent on location, such data theft could occur just as easily in Aberdeen as in Mumbai. The expose shows there are still some contact/processing centres behind the times which are letting the industry down and fuelling bad perceptions.”

He went on to advise the industry that, “The programme puts the onus on users of outsourcing to ensure they go to credible, reputable and mature suppliers. The industry itself has matured since the early days and good suppliers now have very strict policies to avoid any data theft. These include no USB or external email access, no paper and pens allowed; basically all avenues for data removal are taken away. The fact that the NHS is not involved in this scandal is testament to its use of such reputable, proven suppliers.”