Practices should post signs in their waiting rooms informing patients if they plan to share anonymised data and explaining how to opt out, the RACGP says.

The college has told practices to make patients aware of how they collect, store and use their records, including whether they provide any de-identified data to third parties.

The warnings should be displayed publicly as part of a privacy policy pinned up in the waiting room or on the practice’s website, the college suggested in guidelines released last week.

“While individual patient consent for sharing de-identified data is not a legal requirement, most data-extraction tools have functionality that enables individual patients to be removed from the extraction process,” it said.