On the same day that UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown shouted at his ministers for losing their laptops, it seems that six containing information about 20,000 patients were nicked from a south London hospital.

Apparently the computers were taken from a locked cabinet in a secure room at St George's Hospital in Tooting. The laptops were under what passes for high security because they contained medical notes, names, dates of birth and postcodes. The data was apparently stored on the laptops while the hospital's highly-skilled techies fixed a network problem.

St George's admitted the data should not have been stored on laptops and has apologised to every patient, so that's all right, then.

The laptops were password protected and it is unlikely that an ID thief would be able to gain access to the data. The data was backed up elsewhere so the theft will not affect any treatments or appointments - patients will still have to wait nine months for a routine check-up.

Hospital Chief Executive David Astley said it was difficult to anticipate a determined thief who was prepared to force open a filing cabinet and locked drawers to get to the laptops. He failed to suggest how the determined thief knew they were there in the first place. X

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