CCTV is no longer the only source of video footage that NHS Trusts have to manage. Bodycams worn by frontline staff and footage captured on personal devices during incidents all may need to be redacted as a response to a subject access request.
#Video footage sources in healthcare settings
#CCTV footage
Fixed cameras cover entrances, exits, car parks, corridors, waiting areas and, in some settings, clinical spaces. A large NHS trust may operate hundreds of cameras across a single site. The footage they generate is personal data under UK GDPR the moment it captures an identifiable individual. That means it is subject to the full range of data subject rights: access, erasure, restriction of processing.
When a patient, their solicitor or an insurer submits a SAR that touches on CCTV footage, the trust must respond within 30 days and redact every person in the footage who is not the subject of the request.
#Body-worn cameras
The use of body-worn cameras by NHS staff has grown significantly over the past three years, driven by rising levels of violence and aggression in clinical settings. BWC footage is more intrusive than fixed CCTV: cameras are worn at face level, capture audio as well as video, and can record in spaces where fixed cameras are not present. That raises the compliance bar and increases the complexity for processing SARs, since bodycam footage is often more complex to redact than CCTV.
Since the camera moves, faces appear at varying angles and distances, and audio may need to be redacted separately, it requires a higher level of accuracy and audio redaction capabilities.
#Mobile phone recordings
This is the footage type that most hospital policies have been slowest to address. A patient recording their own consultation for personal use is generally treated as note-taking and does not require the trust's permission.
But if that footage captures other patients, staff members or clinical information, it becomes personal data — and the person who recorded it becomes a data controller with their own obligations under UK GDPR. For hospital staff, the practical challenge is that mobile phone footage may end up being a part of a SAR and teams need to be able to handle that.
#Requirements for blurring personal information in videos for SARs
Whatever the source of the footage, the bottleneck is the same: videos must be redacted before they can be released. This means that every person other than the subject must have their face and any other identifying information blurred or masked.
The ICO has also made clear that lack of redaction capability is not a valid reason to refuse or delay a SAR response, so teams need to be able to find a solution that can handle different types of footage, automate most of the redaction, and take care of all relevant scenarios:
Footage in sensitive areas, including from body cameras
Recordings made in crowded areas with multiple people moving
Videos in multiple types of hospital environments, including parking lots or ER bays
#Using Identity Cloak to redact different types of hospital footage
Identity Cloak is an on-premise video redaction tool used by a variety of healthcare organisations, including King’s College Hospital, the Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust, Royal Cornwall Hospital NHS Trust, The South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust (SLaM), Barts Health NHS Trust, and others.
Hospitals choose Identity Cloak because it provides:
Ability to redact videos in-house
Predictable pricing model (and discounts for healthcare organisations)
Ability to quickly redact various types of footage typical for hospital environments:
Busy waiting rooms
BWC footage
Sensitive environments
Parking lots and hospital entrances
Start your free trial or keep reading to see how hospitals are using Identity Cloak for video redaction across different types of hospital footage.
The software is incredibly easy to use, it’s so intuitive. We just upload the video, set our preferences, and let the automation do the work. As a small team, we simply don’t have the time to make lots of manual adjustments. Identity Cloak saves us hours.
#King's College Hospital: secure redaction of CCTV and bodycam footage
King's College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust is one of London's largest teaching hospitals. It receives a steady volume of SARs from patients, legal representatives and insurers.
The Trust uses Facit's Identity Cloak to process those requests.
The application sits within our own network, which ensures that the Trust’s video never leaves our own secure environment, rather than having to place our video in the Cloud, which was an issue here at the Trust.
Read the full King's College Hospital case study.
#Barts Health NHS Trust: video redaction for complex SAR requests
Barts Health NHS Trust provides care to more than 2.5 million people across east London and beyond, handling SARs for footage of accidents, service issues, and allegations of aggressive behaviour.
On average, the Trust receives 25 SARs per year across 8 hospitals, and needs to be able to process body-worn camera footage that also includes audio tracks.
I’ve never looked elsewhere. Every software update brings real improvements that make our job easier and the process more robust. It’s good to know we can handle complex SARs quickly, confidently and compliantly.
Read the full story of switching to Identity Cloak from a manual redaction tool here.
#The Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust: on-time processing for multi-source SAR requests
For The Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust, the tipping point for purchasing Identity Cloak was receiving a complex SAR.
That particular SAR involved months of footage and couldn’t be completed on time without an automated video redaction solution.
Now the Trust also uses Identity Cloak for typical SARs from individuals, legal representatives, and insurance companies.
Identity Cloak’s screen recorder has been a blessing. It solves one of our biggest problems by standardising our CCTV footage so it’s viewable by recipients without technical headaches.
Start your Identity Cloak free trial today
See how quickly your team can process typical requests. Find out more about healthcare pricing or to get a demo showing examples of Identity Cloak handling redaction of typical hospital footage projects.
