{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.020984665052461663, 'fraction_numerical': 0.0010761366693570083, 'mean_word_length': 4.685015290519877, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Medical Confidence, the Law, and Computers: Discussion Paper

The classical starting point of all discussion and analysis about medical confidence is the old one-to-one model of doctor and patient. The patient seeks the services of the doctor to cure some disease from which he believes himself to' be suffering, or at least to alleviate the presenting symptoms. In order to succeed in that enterprise, he must tell the doctor certain things about himself which he might not wish anyone else to know, and to submit himself to an examination which may reveal to the doctor other things that might normally remain hidden. By these means the doctor will acquire information about the patient which would otherwise remain secret that is, things which other people would not normally come to know about the patient because he does not wish them to become known, and only makes them known on this occasion because this greatly enhances his prospects of cure or alleviation. In short, the bargain between patient and doctor is this: 'In order that you may be able to use your skills to'my best advantage, in my interest and for my benefit, I shall disclose to you certain secrets that I would not otherwise disclose to any stranger. I trust you to keep those secrets to yourself, to use them only for the single purpose for which I entrust them to you, and never to disclose them to anyone else without my consent'. The model is familiar enough. It is simple because it involves only two people, and it is so deeply embedded in popular consciousness that the actual bargain which it reflects is probably never made explicitly, because it is generally assumed that everyone knows about it; it is taken as read, it goes without saying. It is what the law calls an 'implied term' of the relationship between the doctor and the patient, something which the law will infer from the relationship itself by applying the standard test for all implied terms: if an officious bystander, present while the parties were making their bargain, were to suggest such a provision to them, they would testily suppress him with a common 'Oh, of course!' (Shirlaw v Southern Foundries 1939). Nonetheless, I have called this the 'old' model, and for good reason. In a modern country like ours, disposing of highly sophisticated health services, a one-to-one episode involving one patient, one doctor, and no one else must nowadays be exceptionally rare. No doctor could keep in his head for long the thousands of items of confidential information he acquires about his patients, and he therefore records them on paper. Those records will be filed by his secretary. In order to help him with his diagnosis, he will take samples from the patient and send them to the laboratories for analysis, where the resulting confidences come into the possession of pathologists, technicians, and their secretaries. When in doubt, the doctor will refer the patient to a specialist who will conduct further examinations, acquire more information and pass this back to the referring doctor, via his secretary. If the patient suffers an episode of disability he will need to be nursed either in hospital or at home, and his nurses will need to be made privy to much of the secret clinical information which has been accumulated about him. He may need specialized treatment from one of the many paramedical professions, or perhaps from a clinical psychologist. He may need the benefit of one or other of the services dispensed by his health authority or local authority, and so a health visitor or a social worker will need to be brought on the scene, and given at least some of that clinical information. As a result, many of the secrets included in the original