The British government continues to be embarassed by the loss of private electronic data. The latest incident involves the medical records of more than 38,000 National Health Service patients sent to a software company for back up in the event the information got lost.

According to the Telegraph, the lost CD had data dating back a decade, believed to have been mislaid while enroute from London to the Sandown Health Center on the Isle of Wight.

A spokesman for the South Central Strategic Health Authority blamed the courier company for the loss. The delivery firm involved was City Link, which garnered the Courier of the Year award in 2007 for reliability and customer service.

City Link is going through all its 92 depots in search of the lost CD, while all the 38,650 names on the CD have been notified of the incident. A spokesman for City Link said, "We are naturally very concerned by the loss of our customer's consignment and a rigorous search for the parcel continues. We are doing everything in our power to resolve the matter and return the package as quickly as possible," according to the Telegraph.

Fortunately, Sandown has a duplicate of the back-up tape, said Dr. Peter Randall, a senior partner at Sandown.

Prior to the incident, there had been embarrassing admissions by the government of data loss containing medical data, driver's license applications and details of court cases.