It really is useful for identifying health trends and allowing informed development of services. As it says on the document, the data will be stored/used without your name, address or any patient identifying number, so it's difficult to see how your confidentiality would be compromised. As they say, there is a way of getting back from the NHS Digital data to the original records to identify the person, apparently they need this provision in case a court of law ruled that the full data must be released for a specific patient record(s). I can't believe a court of law would allow this step to be taken to facilitate commercial use of identifiable patient data. So I won't be opting out, but the thread does a good job of publicising this so if you don't trust the confidentiality safeguards built into the process, you have that option.
