Here are a few I have come across the last week or so.
Note: Each link is followed by a title and a few paragraphs. For the full article click on the link above title of the article. Note also that full access to some links may require site registration or subscription payment.
General Comment
A really quiet week indeed with little happening - other than some new research suggesting the PCEHR needs a great deal more work.
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GPs shun new e-health system
1 February, 2016
More patients than clinicians use My Health Record, and most users – both doctors and patients – are generally negative about the system.
But much of the negativity may be because users don’t understand the system, a new factor analysis of studies shows.
By March 2015, about 9% of all Australians were registered with the My Health Record (MyHR) system, previously known as the PCEHR, with some 5000 GP practices and 11,000 clinicians on board.
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E-health records have few fans, study confirms
1 February 2016
MORE patients than clinicians use My Health Record, and most users – both doctors and patients – are generally negative about the system.
But much of the negativity may be because users don’t understand the system, a new factor analysis of studies shows.
By March 2015, about 9% of all Australians were registered with the My Health Record (MyHR) system, previously known as the PCEHR, with some 5000 GP practices (almost 75% of those eligible) and 11,000 clinicians on board, and 44,000 shared health summaries available.
But the analysis notes that most people viewing the information on the system are consumers, with around 20,000 patient viewings per month.
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Positive beliefs and privacy concerns shape the future for the Personally Controlled Electronic Health Record
- E. C. Lehnbom1,*,
- H. E. Douglas2 and
- M. A. B. Makeham2
Article first published online: 27 JAN 2016
DOI: 10.1111/imj.12956
Abstract
The uptake of the Personally Controlled Electronic Health Record (PCEHR) has been slowly building momentum in Australia. The purpose of the PCEHR is to collect clinically important information from multiple healthcare providers to provide a secure electronic record to patients and their authorised healthcare providers that will ultimately enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of healthcare delivery. Reasons for the slow uptake of the PCEHR and future directions to improve its usefulness is discussed later.
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The Coalition is stuck in ‘Yes Minister’ mode
- Business Spectator
Robert Gottliebsen
I find it stunning that so many Coalition politicians are advocating an increase to the GST when there is a multitude of government spending areas that could be slashed without any effect on services.
Longer term, as our population ages, we may need to increase the GST to pay for the additional outlays required. But there should be no GST increases while lazy politicians pander to the public service.
The two most obvious areas of substantial expenditure cuts that don’t reduce services are in none other than health and education. These are exactly the areas where higher-GST advocates plan to spend the money.
When the Coalition government campaigned to replace Kevin Rudd back in 2013, one of its linchpin policies was to end the massive sums being wasted in health and education, plus other areas, through Commonwealth-state duplication.
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Melbourne Health still grappling with Qbot malware
Virus mutations make it hard to contain.
By Allie Coyne
Feb 2 2016 4:59PM
Feb 2 2016 4:59PM
Melbourne Health is still working to contain a dangerous strain of malware that attacked its systems more than two weeks ago due to the virus' ability to mutate and hide itself from discovery.
On January 18 the health network revealed malicious software had infected Windows XP computers through Royal Melbourne Hospital's pathology department.
The malware downed the hospital's pathology systems and forced staff into manual workarounds.
It made its way into the health department through an unnamed zero-day exploit in Windows XP computers, past the agency's full enterprise antivirus suite.
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Malware attacks a Melbourne hospital’s outdated IT system
Australia February 2 2016
Don’t say we (and Microsoft) didn’t warn you, a prominent Melbourne hospital’s IT system that runs on an outdated and unsupported Windows operating system, Microsoft XP, was hacked last week.
Microsoft recently activated the end-of-life phase for Windows 8, 9 and 10 and encouraged users to transition to the company’s supported operating systems in order to prevent security incidents. The same process was undertaken for Microsoft XP in 2014; however the hospital continued to use the platform in some departments.
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“Health IT – to lead or be led” seminar & workshop
EHRs – today’s reality…
- Lack of clinician engagement with eHealth
- Silos of data
- Fragmentation of eHealth activities and clinical data
There is increasingly awareness of the need for use of clinical data to support high quality healthcare delivery. Yet it has traditionally been difficult for clinicians to engage and participate in influencing the quality of the data that they need to support their care of patients, for research and analysis, to underpin clinical decision support and exchange with other healthcare providers.
Momentum is now gathering in Australia and a number of international eHealth programs to change this, using a new clinician-led approach which involves standardisation and sharing of high quality, computable clinical data specifications.
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Data breach notification: Senate calls for government to explain delays
Senate calls on Attorney-General George Brandis to clarify the government’s intentions
The Senate yesterday backed a motion introduced by Greens Senator Scott Ludlam that called on the government to explain delays in introducing a mandatory data breach notification scheme.
In December the government finally unveiled an exposure draft of a bill to implement such a scheme, after originally committing itself to pushing a breach notification law through parliament the end of 2015.
The introduction of a data breach notification regime formed part of the government’s response to the report of the parliamentary inquiry into the data retention.
The report of that inquiry had recommended the creation of such a scheme.
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Mandatory reporting of data breaches coming
- 05 February 2016
- By Ray Shaw
The Australian Government has proposed that companies with a turnover of $3 million or more must notify people whose personal information may have been exposed in a serious data breach.
The draft bill is open for submissions until 4 March 2016 but it is understood that it is generally equitable.
LogRhythm, a leader in security intelligence and analytics has joined with IPSec, one of Australia’s leading specialists in information protection to launch IPSecGuard to enable Australian organisations of all sizes to leverage the benefits of a 24/7 fully manned security operations centre (SOC) solution.
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Former NAB exec to lead billion-dollar Centrelink IT overhaul
John Murphy to WPIT.
By Paris Cowan
Feb 1 2016 10:00AM
Feb 1 2016 10:00AM
The Department of Human Services has hired a former NAB banking executive to lead its billion-dollar welfare payments infrastructure transformation (WPIT) project.
John Murphy will start work at the department on 22 February, after being appointed to a new deputy secretary-level role created to lead the mammoth replacement of the mainframe-based system currently used to calculate and pay welfare entitlements across the country.
Murphy joins the DHS from the National Australia Bank, where he currently serves as executive general manager of deposits and transaction services, his seventh executive job title with the financial institution, according to his Linkedin profile.
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Barwon Health appoints health veteran as CIO
Fills vacancy created by the departure of Ann Larkins.
By Andrew Sadauskas
Feb 1 2016 2:23PM
Feb 1 2016 2:23PM
Victorian state-owned public health operator Barwon Health has promoted Sharon Hakkennes to the role of chief information officer, filling a vacancy left by the departure of Ann Larkins last year.
Hakkennes has worked in the healthcare industry for more than 20 years and has served in numerous roles since joining Barwon Health in March 2014. Her previous roles for the organisation include director of health informatics and information management officer.
Outside of Barwon Health, Hakkennes is a director of the Kids Plus Foundation, an organisation that delivers multi-disciplinary therapy programs for young people with neuro developmental disabilities, and a member of the department’s clinical informatics reference group.
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Mobile Health Solutions to use Optus satellite
- 03 February 2016
New Zealand health care provider Mobile Health Solutions will use Optus Satellite services to deliver health education via videoconferencing.
Mobile Health Services has entered a deal with New Zealand ISP Wireless Nation for satellite-based mobile videoconferencing services. Wireless Nation uses satellite capacity provided by Optus.
Mobile Health will use the link to deliver health education sessions from its van to rural parts of the country.
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New section for pharmacists on the NEHTA website
Created on Wednesday, 03 February 2016
NEHTA has published a new section specifically for pharmacists wanting to use eHealth.
Pharmacists can find a range of helpful information on eHealth benefits, how to use the My Health Record system in their pharmacy and how to promote their pharmacy as eHealth capable. We have also provided a list of helpful contacts, frequently asked questions by pharmacists and additional information around policies, procedures, processes, and guides.
For help, call 1300 901 001 or please email the NEHTA Help Centre at help@nehta.gov.au.
Webinar slides now available for 'Connecting your software to the My Health Record system'
Created on Friday, 05 February 2016
The presentation webinar slides for the Connecting your software to the My Health Record system webinar are now available for download.
The webinar took place on Wednesday 3 February 2016 and follows on from the first webinar Introduction to the national My Health Record system and will outline the steps for software developers to connect your system to the My Health Record system. It also covers the resources available to support your implementation.
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Telehealth solutions from real world learnings
Delivering and bringing scale to telehealth and telemedicine along with practitioner and user experiences of implementations rather than pilots are among the key themes of this year’s Australian Telehealth Conference (ATC) program, which has just been launched.
Confirmed speakers at ATC 2016 include Associate Professor Francesco Paolucci from Murdoch University who will advise delegates on how to remove barriers and bring scale to telehealth services.
Andrew Slater from Homecare Medical in New Zealand will talk about healthcare professionals and organisations already delivering change while Dr Andrew Lin, the founder and CEO of home health technology developers CliniCloud, is presenting on home medical devices moving telemedicine into the mainstream.
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Can Malcolm Turnbull’s pet project fix myGov?
Could Australia’s most frustrating website be saved by the Prime Minster? If so, he will be remembered for doing a great thing for society.
Fairfax media is reporting that management of the myGov website will be taken away from the Department of Human Services and passed over to the Digital Transformation Office.
The DTO is was established in July 2015 and is part of the Prime Minister’s portfolio. According to the department’s website, its mission is to lead the transformation of government services to deliver a better experience for Australians.
“In any given month, one in eight Australians aged 14 and over will look up government information and services online, totalling around 324 million transactions a year. Of these people, more than half will experience a problem.
Meeting this challenge is vital to our success as a government, and as a nation.”
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ACT government defends seeking access to Canberrans' metadata
Date February 1, 2016 - 12:00AM
Tom McIlroy
Legislative Assembly reporter at The Canberra Times
The ACT government has defended its right to seek access to Canberrans' private phone and internet records without a warrant, in moves designed to assist law enforcement and anti-tax evasion efforts.
Among dozens of federal, state and territory agencies which have sought access to citizens' metadata for criminal investigations or protection of government funds are the ACT Revenue Office and the Access Canberra agency, which sits as part of Chief Minister Andrew Barr's Treasury and Economic Development Directorate.
Last month, the federal government issued a list of 61 non-law enforcement agencies that had applied for the right to access metadata. Australia Post, the Australian Taxation Office, the RSPCA, seven federal departments and local councils are included on the list.
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New project aims to 'reverse-engineer' the brain
The goal is to make computers learn the way humans do
Teaching computers to learn the way we do is widely considered an important step toward better artificial intelligence, but it's hard to achieve without a good understanding of how we think. With that premise in mind, a new $US12 million effort launched on Wednesday with aims to "reverse-engineer" the human brain.
Led by Tai Sing Lee, a professor in Carnegie Mellon University's Computer Science Department and the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition (CNBC), the five-year project seeks to unlock the secrets of neural circuitry and the brain's learning methods. Ultimately, the goal is to improve neural networks, the computational models often used for AI in applications including self-driving cars, automated trading, and facial and speech recognition.
"Today's neural nets use algorithms that were essentially developed in the early 1980s," Lee said. "Powerful as they are, they still aren't nearly as efficient or powerful as those used by the human brain."
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NBN research: fibre to node satisfies as much as fibre to home
- The Australian
- February 5, 2016 12:00AM
Annabel Hepworth
NBN research has found fibre-to-the-node technology as satisfactory as fibre to the home.
Homes with the fibre-to-the-node technology at the heart of the Coalition’s National Broadband Network policy are reporting the same levels of satisfaction as those with the all-fibre model favoured by Labor, research suggests.
The Australian can reveal that initial research finds that both homes getting the NBN over FTTN technology — which uses the century-old copper network for about the last 350m to homes — and those with fibre to the premises are scoring their satisfaction at 7.7 out of 10.
The government-owned company building Australia’s largest infrastructure project will point to the findings today when it delivers its half-year results in Melbourne.
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Good riddance to the Java plugin
Date February 3, 2016 - 8:10AM
Brian Krebs
Java is installed on roughly 850 million computers worldwide.
Good news: Oracle says the next major version of its Java software will no longer plug directly into the user's web browser. This long overdue step should cut down dramatically on the number of computers infected with malicious software via opportunistic, so-called "drive-by" download attacks that exploit outdated Java plugins across countless browsers and multiple operating systems.
According to Oracle, some 97 per cent of enterprise computers and a whopping 89 per cent of desktop systems in the US run some form of Java. This has made Java JRE (the form of Java that runs most commonly on end-user systems) a prime target of malware authors.
"Exploit kits," crimeware made to be stitched into the fabric of hacked and malicious sites, lie in wait for visitors who browse the booby-trapped sites. The kits can silently install malicious software on computers of anyone visiting or forcibly redirected to booby-trapped sites without the latest version of the Java plugin installed. In addition, crooks are constantly trying to inject scripts that invoke exploit kits via tainted advertisements submitted to the major ad networks.
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Enjoy!
David.
In reference to the story of. "Malware attacks a Melbourne hospital’s outdated IT system ". the story references (http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=93245de2-6d49-4a63-ab24-c6ef76a582df), which states, "Microsoft recently activated the end-of-life phase for Windows 8, 9 and 10 and encouraged users to transition to the company’s supported operating systems".
ReplyDeleteWhat Microsoft is referring to is Windows Internet Explorer (IE) 8, 9, and 10 with IE 11 being the supported version and NOT Windows 8, 9 (which never existed) and 10. The picture that is being painted here makes readers think it relates to the Window XP issue if they are not careful.