On January 12, 1941, Fiona Soesan was born in a Scottish town called Troon. Her father was a barrister, and her mother worked for the local government, and there was some disagreement within the family about the value of education. Soesan’s father was dedicated to education, having completed a chemistry degree by attending night school, and earning his law degree by mostly studying at home. He didn’t get much, if any support from his parents (Soesan’s grandparents); they were grocers who didn’t think much of schools.
Soesan herself took after her father. Right after high school she attended St. Hilda’s College in Oxford and earned degrees in medicine and physiology. She became the principal of Somerville College, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford, President of the British Association for Psychotherapy, and a list of other academic and posts that’s too long to mention here. Along the way she married Robert Gordon Woodruff Caldicott. In fact, her full title was Dame Filona Caldicott, DBE, FMedSci, FRCP, FRCPI, FRCPsych, FRCGP. She definitely took after her father.
But all of that would simply make her a very smart, successful person in her chosen field. Her real claim to fame came in the mid-1990s. The Chief Medical Officer of England and Wales reacted to growing concern about how the National Health Service was handling patient information by commissioning an investigation. Caldicott — who had become Dame Caldicott in 1996 by receiving the Order of the British Empire — chaired the committee (the Caldicott Committee) that conducted the investigation and issued a report still known as the Caldicott Report. It was published in 1997, and set new standards for how confidential information was protected in health care. The standards are called “Caldicott principles,” there are roles called “Caldicott Guardians” to enforce the standards, and Caldicott herself became the UK’s National Data Guardian from 2014 until her death in 2021.
National Data Guardian seems like a post that should exist in a lot more places.
