Again, in the last week, I have come across a few news items which are worth passing on.
First we have:
Deficient network at the heart of swine flu response
Karen Dearne | May 12, 2009
THE NetEpi data system and communication networks at the heart of the nation's swine flu response were found deficient during a live trial in NSW last year.
Hunter New England Health tested emergency departments and medical teams across 36 sites in a week-long pandemic training exercise.
While users found NetEpi had been improved since an exercise in 2006, organisers say a new system is needed, "including, but not limited to, a case and contact data collection system".
"We need a system that manages rumour surveillance, influenza-like illness data, population data, geographic mapping, anti-viral usage, adverse events data and staffing capacity to ensure an effective and efficient response," an interim report says.
"Staff found NetEpi difficult to use, data entry was problematic, and analysis and reporting functionalities could not be utilised."
NetEpi is open source web-based software designed to help public health authorities investigate and manage outbreaks of communicable disease as well as other chronic illnesses.
More here:
http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,27574,25464237-15306,00.html
Yet again we find the potential of e-Health not being exploited by the Government. I wonder how long it will be before they ‘get it’.
Second we have:
Who will pay the price for electronic health records?
Rachel Lebihan, ZDNet Australia News
01 November 2000 03:47 PM
Tags: electronic health records, transaction fees, government, funding, australia
The National Electronic Health Record Taskforce estimates that funding in excess of AU$400 million would be required to put an electronic health record (EHR) system in place and to run it over a 10 year period.
Whilst industry sentiment is rife that the government needs to fork out initial funding for the project, it still isn't clear how the network will be financed in the long run.
"Long-term funding is still an open issue at the moment," director of information policy at the Department of Health and Aged Care (DHAC), Paul Fitzgerald, told ZDNet.
However, Philip Hagan, also from DHAC, said a nationwide EHR system "would have to be self-sustained in the long run".
This means that consumers and health providers would incur transaction fees for use of the network.
More here:
I could not resist this – found it a day or so ago. NOTE the date in the header! How long have we been at this!
Third we have:
Security logs, medical records and missile data discovered in disused hard drives
Study involving university researchers in the UK, US and Australia, discovers an assortment of private data on ebay
Kathryn Edwards 13 May, 2009 12:15
A third, or 34 per cent, of disused hard drives still contain confidential data according to a new study, which found missile defence system data and media records on ebay purchases.
The study, sponsored by BT and Sims Lifecycle Services, researched by Wales’ University of Glamorgan, America’s Longwood University and Australia’s Edith Cowan University, also dug up secret data from the German Embassy in Paris and business dealings from a US bank.
Around 300 hard drives from the UK, America, Australia and other countries, bought through computer auctions and on eBay were studied.
“It is clear from the sensitive information revealed by this study that a wide range of organisations, businesses and individuals all over the world are fundamentally failing in their duty to properly manage sensitive data when their IT equipment passes outside of their control,” Sims Recycling Solutions Kumar Radhakrishnan said.
More here:
There is an important message for all those that hold confidential data on their Hard Disks. That must be many of us!
Fourth we have:
Australia: E-Health & Privacy Update
11 May 2009
Article by Alison Choy Flannigan
E-health and privacy update – including the Law Reform Commission Report and Freedom of Information Reform.
The journey towards individual electronic health records has progressed with the federal HealthConnect initiatives and the publication by the National E-Health Transition Authority Limited (NEHTA) of its 'Privacy Blueprint for the Individual Electronic Health Record' for public comment in July 2008.
The National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission Interim Report published in February 2009 has stated that 'an electronic health record that can be accessed - with the persons agreement, by all health professionals and across all settings is arguably the single most important enabler of truly person-centred care. It is one of the most important systemic opportunities to improve the quality and safety of health care in Australia.'
Healthcare providers should keep abreast of the developments in e-health to ensure that they are well placed to adopt the technology upon its introduction.
Proposed changes in privacy laws will also affect healthcare providers who may need to review and update their privacy policies and procedures when they commence.
Full article here (free registration required):
http://www.mondaq.com/article.asp?articleid=79396&login=true
This is a useful summary of the current state of play in the area from DLA Phillips Fox – a major national law firm.
Fifth we have:
GPs face Medical Director fee hike after ad removal
Elizabeth McIntosh - Friday, 8 May 2009
GPs relying on Medical Director for their prescribing software will face annual subscription fee hikes of at least 50%, as the company moves to recoup the costs of pulling pharmaceutical company advertising from its product.
And, in a move likely to disappoint part-time GPs, Health Communication Network (HCN) – which produces the software – has also announced it will no longer offer a discounted rate to part-timers, opting instead for a flat rate.
HCN CEO John Frost attributed the price increase to intense lobbying for an advertising withdrawal by the RACGP, AMA and the National Prescribing Service.
More here:
http://www.medicalobserver.com.au/News/0,1734,4507,08200905.aspx
While it is hard to know it seems HCN might just be padding its margins a little given its competitors have been able to be competitive even with HCN having the extra income. Alternatively I guess it is possible there was very little revenue involved which would have one wonder why it took so long for this to happen. We probably will never know.
Sixth we have:
Online therapy the latest tool to beat the blues
- Tim Lott
- May 17, 2009
Most people with depression need some kind of therapy, but could a computer program replace a counsellor? Tim Lott logged in to find out.
ALTHOUGH I am not depressed — I am merely someone who has experienced a depressing amount of depression — I have just completed eight weekly sessions of a cognitive behavioural therapy course
Big deal, you might well remark. But this course is unusual because I didn't have to leave my desk or even talk to another human being. The therapy is administered entirely by a computer program. Beating the Blues is an attempt by Britain's national health service to meet the growing demand for mental health treatment without spending a fortune on face-to-face therapy.
My instincts were against it; I was insulted by the idea that my difficulties could be solved online. So I logged on to my first session with some trepidation. I was introduced by a honey-voiced computer to five other "co-sufferers" — Andrew, Elaine, Jean, Bob and Heather — who were going to share my journey.
They were played by quite convincing actors, although their characters all seemed a bit feeble. I unkindly branded them as — to use a non-clinical term — "losers". They couldn't get a grip on their lives, they blamed themselves for everything, they couldn't take on goals, and they thought they were failures.
More here:
http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/online-therapy-the-latest-tool-to-beat-the-blues-20090516-b6r7.html
This is a useful article to explain the online counselling process. A pity the article did not explore the evidence base that shows this approach really works!
Seventh we have:
Threading to boost Firefox on multi-core chips
Turns up in the nick of time
John E. Dunn (Techworld) 11 May, 2009 08:31
Mozilla's developers have announced plans to add application multi-threading to Firefox over the next two years, a feature already partially enabled in its main rivals, IE8 and Google Chrome.
As well as allowing the software to take advantage of multi-core microprocessors to boost responsiveness, the enhancement would also improve browser stability, the company said in a news blog on the subject.
More here:
http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/302625/threading_boost_firefox_multi-core_chips?eid=-255
This is very good news for all the Firefox Users out there!
Eighth we have:
Conroy rejects NBN cost analysis
Coalition comms minister furious
Darren Pauli 12 May, 2009 17:04
Communications Minister Stephen Conroy has rejected the need for a cost benefit analysis for the National Broadband Network (NBN).
He said during question time the country is "crying out" for the NBN infrastructure and that additional studies are unnecessary.
“We don’t need any more studies, any more cost benefit analysis,” Conroy said.
More here:
http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/302872/conroy_rejects_nbn_cost_analysis?eid=-255
While I am pretty sure that the NBN will have benefits I would really like to understand the costs. Seems that for a project of the scale of $43Billion it would be a worthwhile thing to be doing. I note Lindsay Tanner said a day or so ago that $43B is the upper end cost.
See here:
SB is Business Spectator Commentator Stephen Bartholomeusz
LT is Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner.
“SB: Lindsay, you referred to the national broadband network a moment ago. That’s the one big chunk of the $22 billion of infrastructure spending in the budget which didn’t go through the Infrastructure Australia process and which doesn’t appear to have had a business case developed for it. Are you comfortable about the economics of a $43 billion network? I mean you’re the Finance Minister. You’re comfortable with the detail?
LT: Yes. Well, it is my job to be comfortable I suppose about these things. Look, the first point, Steve, is that $43 billion is the outer limit of the estimate and it’s got a pretty sizeable chunk of contingency built into it, because obviously projecting forward eight years into a project of that scale; it’s very difficult to come up with specific estimates about what labour costs might be in eight years time or whatever and there’s a vast array of detail underneath the whole proposition and of course that’s the reason why we’ve put in place an implementation study, so that a lot of those things can be fleshed out.
The big variable of course is Telstra’s approach and whether it decides to seek to negotiate an accommodation with the government, so that it’s in the tent or whether it decides to go it alone and oppose what the government’s doing and fight it in the market place. So, there are lots of variables, but we just formed the view that in effect we had to make the clear decision that said this is the outcome we are going to achieve come hell or high water, because it is of fundamental importance to the future of the Australian economy, it is qualitatively different from a new freeway or a rail upgrade or something which are fairly straightforward to compare with other potential applications of capital of a similar nature to a different rail project or a different road project.
It is a standalone thing that will transform the Australian economy, so yes there are risks and there are uncertainties. The question of the nature of private sector involvement of course is not absolutely certain and the implementation study will bring to light detailed issues that we will have to give consideration to, but to me it broadly is equivalent to something like electrification and it’s broadly equivalent to saying well, are we going to have a society where access to electricity for businesses and households is near universal or not? It’s of that magnitude.
SB: Does that mean that the actual economics of the network, particularly in that formative period, are less important than just building it?
LT: Oh look, they are crucial – ultimately you’ve got to have people paying for things, you’ve got to have a cash flow that’s got to be commercial, but so it’s not less important. It’s just that we felt that there’s been so much delay, so much obfuscation, so much money wasted on rubbish programs trying to make people think the government was doing something about it – I’m referring to the previous government of course – and there is so much structural regulatory inefficiency in the industry that we believe that you will see a dramatic transformation. I just think that for any telco, Telstra or anybody else and anybody who’s at all connected with the digital world, the opportunities that this is going to create will be enormous.
I saw a health expert claim the other day that the network once up and running would reduce the need for hospital beds in Australia by 25 per cent. Now, I’ve got no way of assessing the accuracy of that, but what I immediately thought of was well, if that’s true, that means that 25 per cent of hospital activities or activities associated with hospitalisation are now going to be delivered in some form, in some application by people online. That’s a whole lot of activity that currently doesn’t exist, that currently doesn’t happen, that currently doesn’t have businesses and people doing things that will be now occurring online and if you’re Telstra or if you’re Optus or any of these other telcos, that represents huge opportunities for you to innovate to create new applications, new business models, all kinds of things. In the same way that the emergence of the mobile phone, you know, and the Internet have created those opportunities and we’ve seen those flourish, so I believe this is just a unique situation that it’s only comparative that I can think of is the roll-out of electricity starting in effect in the 1920s.”
I would be curious to know what the cheapest estimated cost was! The whole article is well worth a read on a range of budget topics. It is interesting the scale of impact on the health system the Government seems to be hoping for! Has someone told the Health Minister I wonder?
More commentary is found here:
http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/302790/nbn_challenges_lay_ahead_report?eid=-255
NBN challenges lay ahead: report
Challenges include difficulty of achieving a return on investment, pricing
Kathryn Edwards 12 May, 2009 05:11
Lastly the slightly more technically orientated article for the week:
Secure your USB drives with BitLocker To Go for Windows 7
- Date: May 13th, 2009
- Author: Greg Shultz
- Category: Performance, Security, Windows 7
- Tags: Password, Microsoft Windows 7, Microsoft Windows, USB Flash Drive, BitLocker, Greg Shultz
- Special Reports » See more posts on: Windows 7, Vista Report
When Microsoft introduced Windows Vista, one of the big security features in that operating system was BitLocker, a hard drive encryption scheme designed to protect sensitive data from being accessed on lost or stolen computers — mainly laptops.
With the huge increase in the use of very small, large capacity, USB drives, the potential for sensitive data to be lost or stolen has really become more of a problem because it is much easier to lose or steal a device no bigger than a package of Wrigley chewing gum. To protect sensitive data stored on USB drives, Microsoft Windows 7 features the encryptions scheme called BitLocker To Go.
In this edition of the Windows Vista and Windows 7 Report, I’ll introduce you to BitLocker To Go and show you how it works on a 1GB USB thumb drive.
This blog post is also available in the PDF format as a free TechRepublic Download and as a TechRepublic Photo Gallery.
How it works
Basically, BitLocker To Go allows you to encrypt a USB drive and restrict access with a password. Without the password, the USB drive is worthless. When you connect the USB drive to a Windows 7 computer, you are prompted for the password and upon entering it, can read and write to the drive as you normally would.
During the encryption process, Windows 7 installs a special reader onto the USB drive. When you connect the USB drive to a computer running XP or Vista, the BitLocker To Go reader takes control, prompts for the password, and then basically makes the USB drive a read-only device.
BitLocker To Go can be used by both home and business users. In a Domain system, IT administrators can configure a policy that requires users to apply BitLocker protection to removable drives before being able to write to them. Furthermore, the policy can specify password length as well as complexity.
Much more here:
http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/window-on-windows/?p=1176
This looks like a useful addition to Window 7 to ensure data on USB keys can be properly protected when necessary. The article explains how to use it and it looks very user friendly and straightforward.
Here we see how important this feature is:
Govt agencies losing portable data: Privacy Commissioner
New research red flags portable storage, guide released
Rodney Gedda 08/05/2009 08:51:00
Tags: privacy commissioner, privacy, federal government, data loss
Many Australian government agencies do not have appropriate controls covering the use of portable storage devices (PSDs) for the handling of personal information.According to new research by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner, this personal information is being lost at an alarming rate.
While agencies have policies regarding the transfer of personal information, more care needs to me taken to protect data on USB keys, PDAs and optical disks. More than (58 per cent) of agencies have experienced the loss or theft of an agency-issued PSD within the past 12 months.
Australian Privacy Commissioner Karen Curtis said three-quarters of government agencies have policies covering the transfer of records containing personal information, however, there is “definitely room for agencies to improve their safeguards governing the use by staff of portable storage devices”.
More here:
http://www.techworld.com.au/article/302500/govt_agencies_losing_portable_data_privacy_commissioner
More next week.
David.
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