A freeze on access to medical data from the B.C. government has the potential to seriously undermine the health care system if it goes on too long, a prominent Vancouver medical researcher said Friday.
The government announced Thursday that it was temporarily suspending all data sharing with drug and evidence development researchers as part of an investigation into a privacy breach at the ministry that resulted in the firing of four employees and the suspension without pay of three others. The ministry also suspended $4 million in drug research contracts.
Dr. Julio Montaner, director of the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, whose researchers use such data, praised the prompt and decisive action taken by the health ministry to address the issue and said he is confident the data freeze is necessary for security reasons in the short term.
But he warned that access to such data is critically important for researchers to be able to go about their daily work monitoring the safety and efficacy of drugs.