UK Biobank access suspended after major health data breach

Researchers have been blocked from accessing the UK’s largest biomedical database after medical information of UK patients was offered for sale online in China.

Confirming a temporary pause on access to UK Biobank, which holds information on more than 500,000 volunteers, its chief executive Rory Collins said the security measure would allow the platform to conduct a “comprehensive and forensic Board-led investigation of this incident”.

The data breach involved data that had made available to three research institutions which was later offered for sale on a site owned by Alibaba, the Chinese equivalent of eBay, explained Collins in an open letter on 23 April.

The deidentified data of all 500,000 UK Biobank volunteers did not contain any personally identifying information such as names, addresses, dates of birth, and NHS numbers, he said.

According to a statement in the House of Commons, technology minister Ian Murray confirmed the data could  could include gender, age, month and year of birth, socioeconomic status, lifestyle habits, and measures from biological samples.

Murray, who was informed about the data breach on 20 April, said the incident was an “unacceptable abuse of the UK Biobank charity’s data and an abuse of the trust that participants rightly expect when sharing their data for research purposes”.

“The government takes this incident extremely seriously, which is why we have acted rapidly to support the UK Biobank charity in their response and why I wanted to update the House at this early opportunity,” said Murray, who is minister for digital government and data.

“The government will soon be issuing new guidance on control of data from research studies and I would like to take this opportunity to once again urge all businesses and charities to ensure their systems and data-sharing processes are as secure as possible,” Murray added.

According to the minister, the three listings for the stolen data have been taken down and the vendor did not believe there was any purchases of the advertised materials.

“I want to thank the Chinese government for the speed and seriousness with which they worked with us to help remove these listings and ongoing work to remove any further listings,” said Murray, who confirmed the three unnamed institutions had seen their access to UK Biobank data revoked.

jack.grove@timeshighereducation.com