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Migrants to the UK: when is it acceptable to use your medical records for research?

31 March 2017

Dr Rob Aldridge from UCL’s Institute of Health Informatics is looking for migrants who have arrived in the UK within the last five years to take part in a workshop on 27 April 2017 from 10.00-12.00. This scoping workshop aims to understand migrants’ willingness to allow their medical records to be used for research. The workshop will also explore migrants’ medical research priorities. 

Why do we want to know this?

Nearly four out of five people are willing to allow their anonymised medical records to be used in a medical research studies. This willingness doesn’t change by age, gender or whether an individual is employed in a scientific or medical field.

Much less is known about whether this willingness is lower or higher in migrants. 

Understanding how migrants feel about the use of medical records for research is particularly important right now as it was recently reported that the Department of Health signed an agreement with the Home Office for details such as addresses, dates of birth, and GP details to be shared for tracing immigration offenders and vulnerable people who may be at risk. 

Dr Rob Aldridge is running this scoping workshop in order to explore these issues further with migrants before starting a research programme in this area. 

Further details:

For the purpose of this workshop, a migrant includes anyone who arrived in the UK within the last five years and intended to stay for more than six months (any immigration status). 

Travel expenses (within England) and £40 worth of high street vouchers will be given to participants in recognition of the time involved to take part. Drinks and snacks will be available throughout the workshop and a lunch will also be provided at the end.  

To find out more please sign up on the Eventbrite page here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/migrants-to-the-uk-when-is-it-ok-to-use-your-medical-records-for-research-tickets-33321256776