Privacy concerns over My Health Record system
20 May, 2018 / 04:13
Rev. Bill spoke to Bernard Robertson-Dunn, chair of the Health Committee for The Australian Privacy Foundation, about the My Health Record opt-out function and privacy concerns as healthcare industries sign up to connect with My Health Record.Download this podcast here
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More audio from the Privacy Foundation.
David.
6 comments:
I heard most of the broadcast of the MyHR 'roundtable' this afternoon.
Nothing new really, apart from the absence of anyone to outline the massive shortfall between the promises and the reality. The coming privacy disaster was dealt with as you'd expect and two medical 'talking heads' were making very shallow support arguments, as usual.
What really struck me though, was how 'opt in' was said to have failed, when no real public debate or media information strategy, though promised at times, has ever occurred. Consequently, 'opt out' has been introduced without most Australians having any idea about this program, despite it's elephantine gestation and Byzantine complexity and potentially vast scope.
It's hard not to think that the the government and health bureaucracy have adopted a strategy of mandatory inclusion through stealth, for reasons unrelated to improving public health.
Have a look at this reddit thread to get a general idea what the population thinks about myhr.
I have not posted anything about myhr to reddit or this thread, it's all their own work.
https://www.reddit.com/r/australia/comments/8kr9mb/opt_out_of_myhealthrecord/
I have looked into the MyHR, it’s pros and cons, a friend showed my her MyHR and I have spoken with my GP, Privacy and Security are always a factored in online and offline systems. Privacy and Security to one side, the most compelling reason I will be opting out is that the system is, well quite frankly, utter rubbish. I mean no disrespect to all those who have worked on it, and I believe and one stage they ‘burned’ a million dollars a day. But seriously for a supposed modern piece of technology it falls well short.
Thanks MyHR team but no thanks.
With over five million subscribing to the governments HR system and a steady trend of new subscribers, I question the rationale behind this forced conscription especially at this moment in time.
Their is rightfully growing concerns over how some organisations have turned the digital transformation into a digital monster of nightmares
I am currently receiving invitations to opt in from a majority of internet sites I subscribe to as a result of the GDPR.
This surely must alert those we allow to be in power that perhaps the timing is all wrong, and people who are living life online and what to access and share their personal health information, will easily discover the governments HR system if they have no already done so?
Be careful of the statistics.
As of 13 May there are 5,788,087 registrations.
A registration does not mean meaningful a health record.
Between 17 December and 13 May, 366,055 Shared Health Summaries have been uploaded. A SHS is the base document for a my health record.
Anything older than that should be treated with great suspicion.
That means just over 6% of people who have registered have a current-ish SHS. And these belong to people who have (mostly) opted in.
And the big lie that the government may well repeat today is "My Health Record is an online summary of your health information."
No it isn't.
It might be if you and your GP work very hard to make it so and to keep it up-to-date. But that comes at a cost to you and your GP, and by giving it to the government you increase the risk to your privacy.
I bet Tim doesn't mention any of this.
Can't help but wonder why GPs think this will be good for business.... after all, most GPs strive to achieve long-term relationships with their patients, and that's why their patients come to trust them.
The shared summary and medications list make it much easier for commercial medical centres, where doctors are constantly churning and/or on unpredictable shifts, to take a quick buck, as it were, from seeing someone. Handy in an emergency, yes, but hardly the healthcare home ideal.
Then we have the so far unexplained paperless scripts plan for pharmacies, which will definitely support the patient's "home" pharmacy.... now, if you have a script you can in pop in anywhere and get your medication...
But if you have to specify where the script is to be sent, you will definitely want it to be your regular pharmacy.
Of course, using the MyHR model, the script may be sent to what Tim Kelsey describes as a "spine" - the equivalent of a telegraph pole somewhere with tear-off message strips tacked on - where the script will wait until someone *anyone* comes to collect it....
And that's a safer method of transmitting scripts than putting one in the hands of the person it's intended for?
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