Patients are alerted as details of 1,400 stolen

Published on Thursday 23 April 2009 22:08

A LAPTOP holding the details of almost 1,400 hospital patients has been stolen at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary.

Letters have been sent to all patients affected alerting them to the theft.

The laptop, taken from the gastro-intestinal department, contained the names, addresses and dates of birth of 1,392 people.

NHS Grampian had also stored clinical information on the database, which was to be used as part of plans to improve services for people with inflammatory bowel disease.

Police are investigating the theft of the computer, which they said was valued at a low four-figure sum.

A health board statement yesterday said: "The data is double password protected and the clinical information is numerically coded and impossible to interpret without the original software.

"Nevertheless, NHS Grampian takes any breach of security seriously and letters have been sent to all the patients to alert them to the theft and apologise for the breach."

The statement went on: "Further guidance is being issued to all staff to reinforce existing data security policies and ensure that all computer records are appropriately secured."

The missing laptop was taken from a locked cupboard in a hospital corridor, which was also secure, between 5:30pm on Wednesday, 15 April and 8am the following day.