Quote Of The Year

Timeless Quotes - Sadly The Late Paul Shetler - "Its not Your Health Record it's a Government Record Of Your Health Information"

or

H. L. Mencken - "For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong."

Tuesday, July 24, 2018

Influential Commentators and Journalists Weigh In On The MyHR Debate. Lots Of Interesting Perspectives.

Note: I have excluded any commentary taking significant  funding from the Agency or the Department of Health on all this (CHF, RACGP, AMA, National Rural Health Alliance etc.)

Each article is much longer than shown and I just provide a link and the first few paragraphs.
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There is no social licence for My Health Record. Australians should reject it

The Australian Digital Health Agency’s bullish approach to My Health Record shows it learned no lessons from the UK’s disastrous version
A three-month countdown clock alerted many Australians this week to the government’s progress on a massive, mandatory health data centralisation scheme. Known as My Health Record, the scheme compulsorily enlists all Australians into sharing their health information, unless they opt out before the deadline of 15 October 2018.
Swiftly, a vehement public debate has erupted, pitting reasonable arguments in favour of digitisation and linked-up medical care, and equally reasonable arguments about hazards to reliability, privacy and security when records are taken from the physical offices of one provider and made accessible and vulnerable over digital networks to hundreds of thousands of others.
One of the most devastating and under-discussed flaws in the scheme is that it opens access to health data to a slew of parties beyond primary care providers. To understand this, it is important to know something about the scheme’s principal proponent, Tim Kelsey, who led a remarkably similar initiative in England, care.data, which collapsed spectacularly for failing to bring along the public, destroyed institutional trust, and was subject to a series of damning independent reviews.
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Why I'm opting out of the government's digital health record and you should too

By Ben Grubb
16 July 2018 — 10:35am
"I want to make sure we bring consumers with us in the e-health journey by adopting an 'opt in' model – allowing them to choose when to sign on," said Nicola Roxon, about the then-Labor government's roll-out of a voluntary, shared digital health record for all Australians.
"I believe that the benefits of giving the Australian public the choice as to whether they participate will be key to the successful implementation," Roxon continued, adding: "I think moving to an 'opt out' position would be a serious mistake."
Seven years and a change of government later and that "serious mistake" has become a reality: the Turnbull government, under federal Health Minister Greg Hunt's leadership, will now automatically opt everyone into having a digital health record by the end of the year unless they actively withdraw consent during a designated three-month opt-out period that started on Monday.
Then-federal health minister Nicola Roxon said in 2011 that it would be a mistake to move to opt-out.
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My Health Record: the doctor’s tale

Posted by Michael West | Jul 16, 2018 | Business, Featured, Government
Today marks the first day of the three-month “Opt Out” period for My Health Record, the government’s digital database of personal medical records. This article by Dr James Freeman discusses why you should care.
If you’re the sort of person who’s never had a parking ticket and has a similarly unremarkable medical history then you can almost certainly ignore this. On the other hand, if you are one of the one in three of women who have had a termination of pregnancy in their lifetime, or last year you were among the one in five people who had a mental health issue, or among the 125,000 people treated for an alcohol or drug problem, you need to read this.
The simple reality is there are many medical issues most people would regard as private and confidential that are about to become visible to any entity that can access the MyHR.
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My Health Record: the case for opting in

July 16, 2018 4.52pm AEST

Author Jim Gillespie

Deputy Director, Menzies Centre for Health Policy & Associate Professor in Health Policy, University of Sydney
The My Health Record opt-out period begins today, and you have until October 15 to decide whether or not to be part of the scheme. You can read the case for opting out of My Health Record here.

The My Health Record (MHR) system promises to make Australia a leader in providing citizens with access to their own health records.
The scheme gives health care professionals access to information on your medications and allergies, immunisation records, summaries of hospital and GP care, investigation reports, and advance care plans.
This information could save lives in emergencies by providing health workers with information about drug allergies, medications, and medical history. Better continuity in the management of this information would help reduce the 27% of clinical incidents in Australian hospitals currently caused by medication (mis)management.
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My Health Record: the case for opting out

July 16, 2018 4.52pm AEST

Authors

  1. Katharine Kemp
Lecturer, Faculty of Law, UNSW, and Co-Leader, 'Data as a Source of Market Power' Research Stream of The Allens Hub for Technology, Law and Innovation, UNSW
  1. Bruce Baer Arnold
Assistant Professor, School of Law, University of Canberra
  1. David Vaile
Teacher of cyberspace law, and leader of the Data Protection and Surveillance stream of the Allens Hub for Technology Law and Innovation, UNSW Faculty of Law, UNSW
The My Health Record (MHR) opt-out period begins today and you have until October 15 to decide whether or not to be part of the scheme. You can read the case for opting in to My Health Record here.


Unless you take action to remove yourself from the My Health Record (MHR) system, the federal government will make a digital copy of your medical record, store it centrally, and, as the default, provide numerous people with access to it.
If you don’t opt out during this period and later choose to cancel your record, you will no longer be able to access that record but the government will continue to store it until 30 years after your death. You will need to trust that it will not be breached.
There are three main problems with the MHR scheme.

1. It can’t be relied upon as a clinical record

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Clarity on consumer data usage needed to prevent further privacy scandals

A top analyst and research firm says with data privacy controversies continuing to emerge, companies must "do more to reassure customers with clearer expectations about how their data is used".
Data and analytics firm GlobalData is ringing the alarm bells over the continuing data privacy scandals, which really came to light following the revelation "Cambridge Analytica used Facebook data without permission to target US and European voters in elections", which resulted in Facebook being "fined by the UK regulator".
"Furthermore", the company explained, "a recent investigation from Dutch news site De Correspondent and Bellingcat has found that some users of a consumer service have intentionally made their information public and that information could be used for nefarious purposes.
"The investigation revealed that it was possible to find out user work out location information via fitness app and activity tracker Polar Flow and match that information with the names of employees working at US intelligence, military and government buildings.
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'Over a barrel': We are clueless about how much data we're giving up

By Tim Biggs & Patrick Hatch
16 July 2018 — 3:33pm
Australian attitudes about what kind of personal data should be collected and used differ strongly from the realities of the big data marketplace, a report indicates, but many consumers feel powerless to do anything about it.
The report from the Consumer Policy Research Centre (CPRC), titled Consumer Data and the Digital Economy, warns that companies big and small are operating with a such a poor degree of transparency that Australians can't tell if they're making a fair trade with the data they're giving up.
Australians can't tell if they're making a fair trade with the data they're giving up.
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  • Jul 17 2018 at 11:32 AM

My Health Record: the benefits and risks explained

Digital health records are here to stay and as sure as carriages gave way to cars, so paper medical records will give way to electronic ones.
This week has seen intense debate about the push to get Australians to establish online health records which will, over time, become a summary of their key medical information.
While one side extols the benefits, the other warns of the risks.
The debate is happening now because we have just entered a three-month period during which people can opt out of having a My Health Record.
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Tens of thousands opt out of My Health Record, but can Immigration and local councils view the rest?

The ADHA says it'll refuse access to medical records without a court order or warrant. But the law allows that policy to change at any time.
By Stilgherrian for The Full Tilt | July 17, 2018 -- 07:00 GMT (17:00 AEST) | Topic: Security
Around 20,000 people already opted out of My Health Record, Australia's centralised digital health records system, on Monday. It was day one of the three-month window for opting out before records are to be created automatically.
The figure was cited by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull on Melbourne radio 3AW on Tuesday morning. He dismissed privacy and security concerns, confirming that he won't be opting out himself.
"We'll have the highest security on it, and the penalties for breaching it are very, very high. So if somebody were to breach that security, they would find themselves spending a lot of time contemplating their folly in jail," Turnbull said.
The Australian Digital Health Agency (ADHA), which operates the My Health Record system, has also been hosing down concerns. That includes fears that individuals' health records could be accessed by a wide range of law enforcement and other agencies without a warrant, and without notification to either the individual or their medical practitioners.
On Monday night, the @MyHealthRecord Twitter account tweeted a series of FAQs, including one on law enforcement access: "@AuDigitalHealth will only consider a request from a law enforcement agency to access a My Health Record where there is a requirement by law, such as a court order or other enforceable legal instrument."
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Hands off my health records, in the name of privacy

  • The Australian
  • 12:00AM July 18, 2018

Janet Albrechtsen

Last Thursday I learned that the Turnbull government will collect all my heath data and form a digital health record about me, accessible by any doctor, hospital or medical professional across the system. This will happen by the end of the year unless I opt out. The opt-out period started on Monday and runs three months.
On Friday, I learned the head of the Prime Minister’s department, Martin Parkinson, said that some public servants had been sanctioned for an “extraordinary lapse of security” over the filing cabinet full of thousands of pages of secret cabinet documents that turned up at a second-hand furniture shop in the nation’s capital. When the security breach was uncovered by the bloke who bought the cabinet, Malcolm Turnbull described it as a “disgraceful, almost unbelievable act of negligence”.
I will opt out of a digital health record. And here are a few more reasons for concern.
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Government accused of not doing enough to persuade people to remain on My Health Report

Wednesday 18 July 2018 6:51AM
The Federal Government has been accused of not doing enough to persuade people of why they should be using My Health Report, amid a surge in the number of those choosing not to join the online platform.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull yesterday confirmed that around 20,000 people opted-out of the electronic medical record system on the first day of a three-month opt-out period.
Around six million consumers are voluntarily using the national database launched in 2012.
But the decision to automatically create online user accounts from October has some people worried about the safety of personal information under government-run systems.

Guests

Paul Shetler
Partner, Digital Agency Accelerate HQ; Former Head, Government's Digital Transformation Office
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‘No one who uses a public service should be allowed to opt out’: My Health Record head


The bureaucrat overseeing My Health Record presided over a disaster-plagued national health record system in the UK, and has written passionately about the belief people have no right to opt out of health records or anonymity.
Tim Kelsey is a former British journalist who moved into the electronic health record business in the 2000s. In 2012, he was appointed to run the UK government’s national health record system, Care.data, which was brought to a shuddering halt in 2014 after widespread criticism over the sale of patients’ private data to drug and insurance companies, then scrapped altogether in 2016. By that stage, Kelsey had moved to Telstra in Australia, before later taking a government role. There was considerable criticism about the lack of information around Care.data, and over 700,000 UK people opted out of the system.
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Grand health data project likely to end in tears

It's early days to be sure, but the Federal Government's latest showpiece, the My Health Record system, is already beginning to look like it will end up as another cluster***k.
From the overblown statements by the Health Minister Greg Hunt — “it’s arguably the world’s leading and most secure medical information system at any national level" — to the inflating of the number of users, it has all the hallmarks of an IT project that is set to end in tears.
After listening to the former head of the digital transformation agency, Paul Shetler — a man who certainly knows what he is talking about when it comes to IT projects of this kind — one would be well advised to opt out and wait for the inevitable crash.
The government has endured a number of embarrassing IT failures when it comes to big projects. Nobody will forget the census bungle of August 2016. Close on its heels has come the great big data experiment by Centrelink which has resulted in more false positives than not. And one must not forget the constant tech issues that disrupt the famous my.gov and tax office sites.
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The spotlight falls on the e-health agency as it embraces its moment of truth

By Harley Dennett • 18/07/2018
The government’s former digital boss has sharply criticised the digital health agency for ‘not learning from history’ as the campaign to ensure the survival of the My Health Record system has its moment of truth.
When a backlash from parts of the Australian community questions the worthiness of something core to your agency’s function, is it better to keep low and wait out the storm? Or should you to go in fighting?
The Census team at the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the Department of Home Affairs secretary Michael Pezzullo, and the Australian Human Rights Commission all chose the latter when faced with that decision. And this week so has the Australian Digital Health Agency.
Across Australia stories have been planted in radio, television, print and online extolling the benefits of a digital health record, often by telling the stories of people who won’t overdose thanks to the ability to cross-check medications, or medical professionals who want to make the best decisions for their patients.
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Ex-DTO chief slams "significantly flawed" My Health Record

By Justin Hendry on Jul 18, 2018 1:30PM

Would probably opt-out.

Former Digital Transformation Office chief Paul Shetler has labelled the rollout of the My Health Record “significantly flawed”, citing issues with its security model and design as barriers to take-up.
Speaking on ABC Radio on Wednesday, Shetler criticised the Australian Digital Health Agency for not altering the personal electronic health record system's “weird security model” to meet its new circumstances.
The current security model requires users to manually set privacy settings to restrict access to the record or avoid sharing certain types of information after a record has been created.
“[My Health Record] was initially designed as an opt-in system, and those kinds of security settings kind of make sense for an opt in system because you kind of know what the system will be used for. You know why you’re going to be in it, you’ve chosen to do it and so therefore you want to make this data available,” Shetler said.
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Bungled My Health Record launch represents a missed opportunity

By The Canberra Times
19 July 2018 — 12:00am
The worst thing about the disappointing way the federal government's My Health Record has been implemented is that millions of Australians are now much more likely to opt out of the potentially life-saving initiative than otherwise.
Unless swift action is taken to reassure people their information will not be shared with private health insurers, ambulance chasing legal firms and the like, this may well end up a "tech wreck" of similar magnitude to the bungled 2016 Census and the "Robo-debt" debacle.
That is bad given the core concept, an on-line portal through which any individual's detailed medical records can be accessed by authorised persons in the event they changed medical practitioners or were involved in a medical emergency, is excellent.
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When nudge comes to shove: making e-health opt-out was always a risky venture

By Stephen Easton • 19/07/2018
The sudden rush to opt out of e-health records this week amid a groundswell of delayed-action privacy concerns demonstrates that governments have to be very careful about how and when they use the most powerful nudge of all.
Default enrolment – opt-out rather than opt-in – is the “the Usain Bolt of nudges” in the words of law professor Cass Sunstein, who helped coin the term nudge to describe government interventions that preserve individual choice, in contrast to mandates and bans.
“They work really fast and they have a massive impact,” explained Sunstein at the recent Behavioural Exchange conference in Sydney (pictured above). This means they also must be used with caution.
He emphasised that automatic enrolment “has far more impact than other kinds of nudges” such as making choices simpler and easier for people, giving them carefully crafted pieces of information at the right moments, referring to social norms, offering non-monetary rewards or simply asking people to stop, think and actively make a choice or a pre-committment.
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When your future is in your shaking hands - and one mistake can kill

By Harry Iles-Mann
18 July 2018 — 5:26pm
I was hospitalised nine times in 2012 with bowel obstructions that could have killed me.  Each time in emergency, I recounted through gritted teeth my medical history in all its terrifying glory - more than 20 years of multiple chronic health problems. I tried desperately though the fog of pain to remember the eight medications I was taking - and would then, as my vision blurred, try to tell the nurse I was allergic to sulphur-based medications.
I was lucky I never presented unconscious. If I had, I likely would have been prescribed a medication that would have triggered an allergic response and internal bleeding, or the very carefully managed doses of my medication might have been prescribed incorrectly, causing a dramatic change in my condition.
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UWA software expert slams My Health Record system as a waste of money

 Cathy O'Leary The West Australian
Thursday, 19 July 2018 4:00AM
The My Health Record site has come under fire from experts.
A University of WA software expert claims the My Health Record system is a waste of money and the opt-out scheme does nothing to allay concerns.
The criticism comes as figures show WA has the second lowest uptake of all States for the digital personal health record, with 20 per cent of people signed up compared with the national average of 24 per cent.
According to the Federal Government’s Australian Digital Health Agency, six million people are registered, as well as 13,000 healthcare providers.
Dr David Glance, director of UWA’s Centre for Software Practice, said the opt-out model was throwing good money after bad.
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Editorial: My Health Record opt-out decision poses confidentiality concerns

The Editor, The Courier-Mail
July 20, 2018 12:00am
Subscriber only
PEOPLE hand over information about themselves just about every day, especially when using digital devices and applications they carry.
Social media such as Facebook, Twitter and Google accounts pick up and store things about us – whether it’s as simple as our browsing history online through to spending habits and even some financial records. We know this because after having searched for a holiday destination, we are prompted to look at ads for that very place again and again when opening a particular web page.
When it comes to information held by governments, it is certain to be greater than we are aware. Not only do governments hold some basic sets of information – for instance, records of our international travel, our tax details, any interactions with law enforcement or intelligence agencies, road safety and traffic behaviour, as well as records of where we live and what jobs we have – they can also delve into more complex facts. Governments can match up welfare, taxation and health data to get a more complete picture of individuals.
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My Health Record is a perfect gift for hackers

  • Anthony Bergin
  • The Australian
  • 12:00AM July 20, 2018
The former head of the federal government’s Digital Transformation Agency, Paul Shetler, has pointed out that the way the My Health Record has been set up means millions of Australians are being given an online record without realising that they have to change their security settings manually to protect their medical history.
He observed that with an opt-out system people’s data could be accessed for things that had nothing to do with their heath.
The issue highlights the widespread security vulnerabilities in our healthcare system. Outdated computer systems are putting hospitals at risk of hackers. Last year the Victoria Auditor-General’s Office found that the state’s healthcare systems weren’t securely configured. In many cases the systems were so outdated that the original developer no longer was issuing security updates. The auditor concluded there was a real risk of hackers stealing or altering hospital, financial or patient data.
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MyHealth data to be stored on a highly-secure state-of-the-art Commodore 64

July 19, 2018

WRITTEN BY
Charles Firth
The Chaser Quarterly
Facing mounting criticism over the security of private medical records of millions of Australians, the government has claimed the MyHealth Record website is virtually impenetrable.
Heath Minister Greg Hunt today told reporters the website was far too unreliable for hackers to be able gain access. “Our protection is flawless: if anyone tries to gain access, they usually just end up with a 404: The Website Not Found message. You can’t get more secure than that.”
Minister Greg Hunt also announced on Thursday that the interface of MyHealth will be redesigned by the same designers who did the MyGov website. “That way, if someone does manage to gain access to your account, they won’t be able to find the information they want anyway.”
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National medical database rolls out amid lingering security concerns

  • The Australian
  • 12:00AM July 20, 2018

Sean Parnell

Not so long ago, some enterprising thieves got their hands on medical records from clinics in southwest Sydney and used them to access Medicare. Now, anyone who has tried to get money out of Medicare will know that can be difficult, but these thieves were remarkably successful. Before the crime was discovered, they had made more than 5650 fraudulent claims totalling more than $500,000, compromising not only the privacy of the hundreds of patients but the security of the clinics and the integrity of government services.
As Medicare and NSW police formed a joint strike force to clean up that mess (some of the alleged offenders were still going through the courts last year), concerns were raised over another potential security breach. Melbourne academics discovered Medicare providers potentially could be identified in a dataset released by the government. The dataset contained claims information for a 10 per cent sample of people who had accessed Medicare benefits since 1984 or pharmaceutical benefits since 2003. Needless to say, it swiftly was taken offline.
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19 July 2018

Top 10 most awkward questions about the MHR

Posted by Jeremy Knibbs
The MHR opt out launched on Monday to a raft of consumer media interviews which reveal a disturbing lack of understanding of some key issues underlying the project.
You can’t blame them though. They are on a 24-hour news cycle and their major source of information is the government itself. So we’ve put together our top 10 most awkward questions about the project.
We’d love to hear the government’s take on them.
  1. What is the MHR for?
It’s surely a sign of a project that has lost its way just little when you can’t easily get to a short and precise description of what they project is meant to achieve. But try to find anywhere on the ADHA website what the precise and meaningful objectives of the project are.
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'Errors and incompetence': Australians split over government's opt-out digital health records

By Jennifer Duke, Ben Grubb & Esther Han
20 July 2018 — 11:15pm
The federal government is automatically assigning each Australian a digital health record unless they opt-out. Now, a debate is raging between GPs, peak mental health bodies, hospital staff, privacy advocates and computer security professionals about the benefits these records provide weighed against privacy concerns for such deeply intimate files.
Matt McInnes is among those attempting to opt his children out of receiving a My Health Record, the federal government’s shared digital health file designed to collect and store Australians' medical information by the end of 2018.
The system promises to centralise health records, allowing patient information to be readily available to various medical professionals across the country, and potentially save lives by, among other benefits, alerting doctors of patient allergies and medications.
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My Health Record opt-out debate is getting silly but government is at fault

Neither government nor the medical lobbyists have noticed that they've lost the public's trust when it comes to safeguarding data. They need to listen, and earn that trust back.
By Stilgherrian | July 20, 2018 -- 04:43 GMT (14:43 AEST) | Topic: Security
"Gawd. This debate is becoming stupendously ridiculous," tweeted Dr Norman Swan on Friday. He's the presenter of the ABC's Health Report and one of Australia's most respected broadcasters.
"It's the most important piece of health infrastructure in a generation and it's been hijacked by the privacy ideologues. Everyone retains the right to choose. Get over it and stay in!! Can't believe it," he said.
Swan is right. The debate over whether or not to have your health records uploaded to a central digital repository has indeed become stupendously ridiculous. But not for the reasons he thinks.
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Big Brother is watching, and we all of us need to worry

  • The Australian
  • 12:00AM July 21, 2018

Peter Van Onselen

The federal government, and the Health Minister in particular, wants us all to sign up to the My Health ­Record system so it can track and share our health records electronically. It is so keen for Australians to be part of the new system that, rather than embracing an opt-in approach, it is shunning best practice and forcing anyone who doesn’t want to be involved to opt out.
If you do nothing, if your complacency gets the better of you, then your health records automatically will be uploaded into the MHR system. Governments usually are more than happy to spend millions of taxpayers’ dollars on ­“information campaigns” — supposedly to better ­inform the public about public policy initiatives. Too often those campaigns have a highly partisan edge to them, such as the Work Choices ads before the 2007 federal election.
Yet on this occasion, when best practice is being ignored and people need to actively opt out of the MHR system, there is no advertising push, no information campaign to make people aware of the options. Frankly, it’s Orwellian and the government should be ashamed of itself.
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'We desperately need this data': NIB boss wants members' digital health records

By Nassim Khadem
Updated  21 July 2018 — 8:36am first published at 12:01am
NIB chief executive Mark Fitzgibbon is hoping the private health insurance fund can get permission from its 1.5 million customers to access their  digital health record, despite mounting privacy and security concerns.
In an interview with Fairfax Media, Mr Fitzgibbon said Australians opting out of the federal government’s digital My Health Record system were preventing health providers from accessing vital information that could be helpful in a medical emergency.
"If I get a hit by a bus tomorrow, I want the hospital to have my [digital] record," Mr Fitzgibbon said.
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My Health Record 'identical' to failed UK scheme, privacy expert says

Care.data was cancelled because drug and insurance companies were able to buy patient data
Australia’s impending My Health Record system is “identical” to a failed system in England that was cancelled after it was found to be selling patient data to drug and insurance companies, a British privacy expert has said.
My Health Record is a digital medical record that stores medical data and shares it between medical providers. In the UK, a similar system called care.data was announced in 2014, but cancelled in 2016 after an investigation found that drug and insurance companies were able to buy information on patients’ mental health conditions, diseases and smoking habits.
The man in charge of implementing My Health Record in Australia, Tim Kelsey, was also in charge of setting up care.data.
Phil Booth, the coordinator of British privacy group Medconfidential, said the similarities were “extraordinary” and he expected the same privacy breaches to occur.
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An Attempt At Nuance Regarding MyHealthRecord

There’s been quite a lot of coverage of the My Health Record system since the opt-out period began almost a week ago on Monday 16 July 2018. I’ve been somewhat involved in providing commentary, and there’s only so much you can do with the limited space and structure of a radio interview or OpEd. Here I have a little more room to move, so I want to see if I can provide some nuance that has been missing from my other commentary.
An example of the (entirely fair) questions I’ve been getting:
@jpwarren you seem to know things – is GovTech twitter against a centralised health record in general OR just this one and how it is being implemented?
— John Westgarth (@JWestgarth) July 18, 2018
While we don’t have infinite time and space to answer, I’ll give it a go.
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My HealthRecord Digest

I've been doing a bit of media about myHealthRecord this week, and have been burning up Twitter with my posts, so I thought I'd compile a summary post as a reference - particularly as I'm back at work next week and won't be as available.

Audio

2018-07-16:  The case for opting out of myHealthRecord [radio 2GB] 
2018-07-17: myHealthRecord: should you opt out? [radio 2SER]

Print

2018-07-15: My Health Record: Your questions answered [backgrounding only - ABC Online]
2018-07-15: Breach 'inevitable' in digital health records [Fairfax]
2018-07-16: My Health Record opt-out period begins, but privacy concerns remain [ABC Online]
2018-07-17: Why would a doctor not be in favour of myHealthRecord? [Croakey]

Related Work

As part of my work with Future Wise, I have been the lead author on a number of our submissions in the area of digital health and privacy:
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David.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank you David they all make compelling points. The trick will be if this can be kept up. The government will not act while there is no combined voice.

As you point out none of these commenters are being funded to have an opinion.

Anonymous said...

Some are now trying to say that this is like banking or flying an airline. From a security perspective that is quaint to say the least. I wonder would we accept an incomplete set of accounts or bank statement? Would we get on a plane that is missing a wing or navigation?

Anonymous said...

Now with the human rights commissioner voice concerns something must be going on. Why are we not being presented the optout figures? Are the at a level that the ADHA CEO finds uncomfortable? We have been feed every other statistic, why not with optout figures?

If this is the way we will be treated then it will be hard to build trust.

Anonymous said...

July 24 8:53 PM. It is becoming clear that no one really knows what they are talking about, what the system is, why it is, or the framework that it operates on. I note in my local rag this morning the minister is now using 10% as a figure for optout numbers. That is a considerable increase from 2%. So we have moved from 500,000 towards 2,500,000.

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/millions-to-opt-out-of-my-health-record-as-backlash-builds-20180724-p4ztb0.html

There are also online petitions and can be found in the comments below the SMH article.

Anonymous said...

I see the president of the AMA admits he does not even have a MyHR. Also ng with the CEO of ADHA probably not eligible to have one, why is it these two are attempting to force one on everyone else?

I am still bemused why the Government is going down this path, why would they even want to look after people’s data to this degree, it has little clinical utility and is holding back alternative ways for grey nomads to share information when they go interstate.

Anonymous said...

The government wants the data so that they can monitor and control GPs. Nothing to do with health care, it's all about economic/fiscal policy. Follow the money.