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Privacy Commissioner Marie Shroff has strengthened the Health Information Privacy Code 1994 to improve legal protections around newborn babies bloodspot samples. These samples are collected as part of a national newborn metabolic screening programme, also called the heelprick or Guthrie Test. The samples are held permanently unless parents request their return. The amendment will restrict how information derived from the samples may be used and disclosed. DNA testing is getting cheaper and faster all the time and that makes national bloodspot collections more valuable. Because of this it is possible someone in the future will want to use the collection as a national DNA database. If this were to happen, trust in the programme would be severely damaged.