“The investigation traced the data loss to the theft of a Trulife laptop in February last year and contained information on between 3,000 to 3,500 of our patients.  No sensitive information related to patient health was held by Trulife, nor did they generate any.

“We are working with Trulife to identify those patients affected and will be writing to them directly.

‘The investigation has identified further steps by both the Trust and Trulife to further protect the information of patients whose details need to be available.”

A spokesman for Sandwell and West Birmingham Trust, which run the other three hospitals, said: “Trulife has written to 3,633 of the Trust’s patients on July 14, and to date Trulife has received 59 calls to its helpline.

“Trulife provided surgical orthotics appliances - for patients with bone illnesses - at the Trust until March last year. The orthotics service is now provided in house. Hospital chiefs were informed about the laptops in June this year and instructed Trulife to write to all patients affected by the data loss to inform them of the incident.

“Although the laptop in question was reported stolen on the February last year, Trulife did not discover that the laptop held data about Sandwell and West Birmingham Hospitals NHS Trust patients until October.

“After a police investigation into these thefts, the police characterised the risk of subsequent access to and use of the data as low and suggested it was more likely than not that the laptops would simply be sold for their hardware value rather than for any interest in the data that the laptops contained.”