Who Is Assessing Your Medical Evidence? Inside IBCA’s £6 Million Clinical Assessment Contract

By The Unheard Voice

When someone submits decades of deeply personal medical evidence to the Infected Blood Compensation Authority, they might reasonably assume that the people interpreting that evidence are part of IBCA itself.

But IBCA’s own privacy notice reveals another organisation involved in the process:

Interact Medical.

IBCA states that it may share a claimant’s medical evidence with its medical advisers at Interact Medical, describing them as a panel of clinicians who provide an independent medical opinion to support compensation decisions.

That sentence deserves much more attention than it has received.

Because behind those independent medical opinions is a substantial public contract — and some important questions about exactly how medical evidence is being assessed.

A £6 million contract

Public procurement records show that the Cabinet Office awarded Interact Medical Ltd a contract titled “IBCA Specialist Medical Clinical Assessors.”

The contract is valued at £6 million and runs from 1 October 2025 until 30 September 2028.

The procurement notice explains why external clinicians were required:

IBCA needed continuous, independent and specialised clinical expertise to help it process claims, maintain the quality of decisions, prevent delays and deliver compensation.

On the face of it, bringing in specialist medical expertise makes sense.

But for the infected blood community, the important question is not simply whether doctors are involved.

It is who those doctors are, what expertise they have and what happens when their opinion affects a claim.

These are not ordinary medical files

The medical evidence involved in infected blood claims can be extraordinarily complicated.

Some infections happened forty or fifty years ago.

Some people were never properly told they had been infected.

Some diagnoses came years after infection.

Others died before modern testing for hepatitis C was available.

Records may be incomplete, missing or destroyed.

Death certificates may not record the full consequences of infection.

Families handling estate claims may now be trying to reconstruct the medical history of somebody who died decades ago.

That makes the interpretation of evidence particularly important.

A clinician looking at one of these files needs more than general medical knowledge.

They need to understand the history of infected blood, the limitations of historic testing and record keeping, and the findings of the Infected Blood Inquiry.

What specialist knowledge is required?

There are questions IBCA should be able to answer clearly.

What qualifications are required before a clinician can assess an infected blood compensation claim?

Are cases involving HIV reviewed by clinicians experienced in HIV medicine?

Are hepatitis C cases considered by hepatology or infectious-disease specialists?

What about hepatitis B?

Haemophilia?

Cirrhosis?

Cancer?

Complex treatment histories?

Psychological injury?

And what specific training are clinicians given about the infected blood scandal itself?

This matters because the absence of a diagnosis written neatly in a medical record does not necessarily tell the whole story.

Missing records cannot become another barrier

Sir Robert Francis KC has previously addressed this very issue.

His recommendations recognised the difficulty claimants may face when medical records have disappeared or been destroyed.

He said that where records are unavailable, a sympathetic approach should be taken to other available information, with a willingness to draw favourable inferences from circumstantial evidence.

He also made clear that the recollections of applicants are themselves evidence and should be treated with respect and understanding.

That principle is crucial.

If an external clinician is examining a file from the 1970s, 1980s or 1990s, they must be applying those principles — not treating gaps in records as gaps in truth.

What does “independent” mean?

IBCA describes the opinions provided by Interact Medical as independent.

But claimants deserve to understand exactly how that independence operates.

Who chooses the clinician reviewing the case?

Does the clinician receive the entire medical file?

Do they see statements supplied by the claimant and their family?

Can they request additional evidence?

Does IBCA tell claimants when their evidence has been sent for an external medical opinion?

Can claimants obtain a copy of that opinion?

If the clinician makes a factual mistake, can it be corrected before compensation is calculated?

Can a claimant submit an opinion from their own consultant or specialist?

And perhaps most importantly:

How much influence does that external medical opinion have over the final award?

These are not accusations.

They are reasonable questions about a process capable of affecting people’s compensation.

Transparency matters because history matters

There is a painful irony here.

The infected blood scandal itself was characterised by secrecy, poor communication and patients not always being told what was happening to them medically.

The compensation system created in response to that scandal must therefore operate differently.

People should not discover by accident that their medical evidence may have been sent to an external organisation for assessment.

They should know.

They should understand why.

And they should know what rights they have if they disagree with the resulting opinion.

£6 million of public money brings accountability

A contract worth up to £6 million over three years is significant.

The public procurement notice tells us why external clinical expertise was commissioned.

What it does not tell an individual claimant is exactly how that system operates when their own medical history lands on an assessor’s desk.

IBCA could help build confidence by publishing straightforward information explaining:

• the qualifications required of assessors;

• the specialties represented on the clinical panel;

• the infected-blood-specific training they receive;

• the guidance used when records are missing or contradictory;

• how conflicts of interest are managed;

• how medical opinions are quality checked;

• whether claimants automatically receive those opinions;

• and how claimants can challenge an assessment they believe is wrong.

This isn’t about attacking doctors

There is no suggestion that individual clinicians working for Interact Medical are behaving improperly.

Nor is there anything inherently wrong with IBCA using external medical expertise.

The concern is transparency.

People applying for compensation are handing over some of the most intimate information they possess.

For estate claims, families may be handing over the final medical records of somebody they loved.

Those records can document HIV, hepatitis, liver disease, cancer, disability, psychological trauma and eventually death.

If somebody outside IBCA is being asked to interpret that evidence and provide an opinion that could influence compensation, claimants deserve to understand exactly how that process works.

After decades during which infected and affected people were too often left in the dark, the compensation system should not require another leap of faith.

If an external medical opinion can influence recognition or compensation, then the people whose lives are being assessed have every right to know who is making that judgment, how it is being made and how they can challenge it.

That is not an unreasonable demand.

It is basic transparency.

— The Unheard Voice