The frustration of British doctors with government plans to upload patient medical records to a national database has boiled over into open revolt.

Doctor’s organisation the British Medical Association has today called for a complete suspension of the programme saying it has “serious concerns” over its “rushed” implementation. A key concern of the BMA is that the ‘summary care records’ are being created without any consent from patients.

“The break-neck speed with which this programme is being implemented is of huge concern,” says Hamish Meldrum, chairman of council at the BMA. “Patients’ right to opt out is crucial, and it is extremely alarming that records are apparently being created without them being aware of it.”

Britain’s centralised database is potentially the world’s largest collection of medical records and has excited many researchers about the potential for mining such data. In last year’s Nature News feature, Clinical epidemiology: Archived answers, John Powell, of the University of Warwick, said:

There’s a massive debate going on right now about consent — whether patients are opting in or opting out of a research system. Doctors for the most part are arguing that people have to give consent to opt in, civil servants in the Department of Health are saying they have to opt out. From the research point of view, we want to have maximum people and maximum data in.

In return for getting completely free health care for everything, there are certain things you have to sign up for as a resident — and one of those things should be secondary use of your data for the anonymous NHS research, but not for pharmaceutical companies.

But, as the feature acknowledged, doctors are leery. In February, medical newspaper Pulse reported that “[Doctors’] leaders have launched a campaign to encourage more patients to opt out of the controversial Summary Care Record, amid fears thousands are being railroaded into it ahead of the general election.” The paper (where I used to work) also claims that patients wanting more information on how records will be used have to call a phone line costing up to 20p a minute.

The BMA is now calling for the Department of Health to stop implementing the summary care records scheme in areas of England that have not properly informed the public about it. It is also demanding that future information packs sent to patients contain an opt out form.