The UK's National Health Service has taken down its NHS Appraisal Toolkit Web site due to concerns that it might be vulnerable to hacking.

"The site provides an online database that allowed NHS doctors to prepare for their annual appraisals," writes The Register's John Leyden. "The database therefore contains confidential information about all GPs' performance, along with a large amount of named patient data including near diagnosis misses, critical incidents and the like."

"www.appraisals.nhs.uk was pulled offline without warning to the 27,000 doctors who use it after a security audit sparked fears that the site was insecure," Leyden writes.

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