Spreadsheets

[NickFitz]

Apparently it was in rows, not columns. The problem was they saved it as .xls and not .xlsx

[vetran]

The cool kids who don't want the spreadsheet to crash use INDEX and MATCH

FTFY

the ones with a brain use SQL to store data and if at gunpoint excel as the viewing tool.

[dsc]

Wasn't it simply a case of doing an automated export to xls to help ordinary folk "see" the data, email to all concerned parties etc.? If that's the case I can already see a tester somewhere thinking "fecking hell we tested with a 1000 entries and pushed this ticket into Resolved".

[fullyautomatix]

What kind of idiots are they using that are using spreadsheets in this digital age. They must be 20 years behind.

[Old Greg]

Wasn't it simply a case of doing an automated export to xls to help ordinary folk "see" the data, email to all concerned parties etc.? If that's the case I can already see a tester somewhere thinking "fecking hell we tested with a 1000 entries and pushed this ticket into Resolved".

My guess is that they are using labs in addition to those they normally use for routine hospital bloods - commercial labs, research labs, veterinary labs. These labs probably don't support normal healthcare HL7 messaging of lab results, so they were in a hurry to implement and decided to export into Excel, possibly manipulate data in Excel to normalise data (e.g. add leading zeroes to phone numbers etc. so patients get SMS) and then import into their public health system. This probably made sense in the early days when everything had to be done quickly. But they had the summer, when things were quieter and the surge expected to migrate to a more robust system / process.

[SueEllen]

My guess is that they are using labs in addition to those they normally use for routine hospital bloods - commercial labs, research labs, veterinary labs. These labs probably don't support normal healthcare HL7 messaging of lab results, so they were in a hurry to implement and decided to export into Excel, possibly manipulate data in Excel to normalise data (e.g. add leading zeroes to phone numbers etc. so patients get SMS) and then import into their public health system. This probably made sense in the early days when everything had to be done quickly. But they had the summer, when things were quieter and the surge expected to migrate to a more robust system / process.

I've worked for government agencies and in financial services where manual procedures have the be used due to failures off or in addition to automated processes - things were checked in triplicate as a minimum. I suspect this wasn't happening after the first few occasions.....

[vetran]

What kind of idiots are they using that are using spreadsheets in this digital age. They must be 20 years behind.

So let me get this straight, they are sharing confidential medical information with contact details in spreadsheets. Can we lock Matt Handcock up with the BLM & EDL protesters on GDPR breaches?

[Eirikur]

What kind of idiots are they using that are using spreadsheets in this digital age. They must be 20 years behind.

Else it won't run on windows XP

HMS Queen Elizabeth is 'running outdated Windows XP', raising cyber attack fears

[Old Greg]

So let me get this straight, they are sharing confidential medical information with contact details in spreadsheets. Can we lock Matt Handcock up with the BLM & EDL protesters on GDPR breaches?

Using Excel is not in itself a GDPR breach. It should however be subject to a DPIA and the risks managed (and they should have moved away from this over the summer when they had breathing space).

[Eirikur]

Using Excel is not in itself a GDPR breach. It should however be subject to a DPIA and the risks managed (and they should have moved away from this over the summer when they had breathing space).

I don't remember giving consent for my data to be shared, when I did a covid test back in July, so I think they are actually breaching GDPR guidelines (which will cease after Dec 31st anyway)