Note: I have excluded (or marked out) any commentary taking significant funding from the Agency or the Department of Health on all this to avoid what amounts to paid propaganda. (e.g. CHF, RACGP, AMA, National Rural Health Alliance etc. where they were simply putting the ADHA line – viz. that the myHR is a wonderfully useful clinical development that will save huge numbers of lives at no risk to anyone – which is plainly untrue) (This signifies probable ADHA Propaganda)
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Note: I have broadened this section to try to cover all the privacy compromising and impacting announcements in a week – along with the myHR. It never seems to stop!
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Pinterest takes on anti-vaxxers by blocking vaccine-related searches
- By Robert Mcmillan and Daniela Hernandez
- 9:53AM February 22, 2019
Pinterest has stopped returning results for searches related to vaccinations, a drastic step the social-media company said is aimed at curbing the spread of misinformation but one that demonstrates the power of tech companies to censor discussion of hot-button issues.
Most shared images on Pinterest relating to vaccination cautioned against it, contradicting established medical guidelines and research showing that vaccines are safe, Pinterest said.
The image-searching platform tried to remove the anti-vaccination content, a Pinterest spokeswoman said, but has been unable to remove it completely.
Pinterest described the search ban — which the company hasn’t previously publicly discussed but which went into effect late last year — as a temporary but necessary measure until it can develop better strategies to sift through what it calls “polluted” content. The company made a similar decision last year to block searches for dubious cancer therapies.
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Data breach law: one year and not much to show
- 22 February 2019
- Written by Sam Varghese
One year since the Australian Government put in place a data breach notification law, the only visible change is that the workload of the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner has increased - it has to issue quarterly breach list, But nobody is any the wiser as to how the man in the street is affected by the various breaches that are reported periodically.
The law seems to have been put in place merely to have something, anything — even tiny New Zealand had one long before Australia — rather than to be seen to be lagging behind the rest of the world.
Unlike the General Data Protection Regulation which was put in place by the European Union in May last year, the Australian law only caters for breach notification of pre-existing rights. The GDPR, on the other hand, recognises specific additional rights, including the right of reasonable access to enforcement.
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How can GPs encourage continuity of care?
Research shows continuity of care leads to better health outcomes. But in a time-poor and highly-mobile age, how can doctors actually encourage patients to keep coming back? Three long-time GPs give their views.
21 Feb 2019
For Dr Hester Wilson, treating patients over many years is one of the perks of the job.
‘Seeing people over time, getting to know them, their family and kids – it’s one of the real joys and privileges of being a GP,’ she told newsGP.
‘That ongoing relationship is very important. When patients find a GP they really like, they’re really loyal. If they move house, they’ll keep coming even if it’s a long distance.’
But Dr Wilson, Chair of the RACGP Specific Interests Addiction Medicine network, is well aware that many of her long-term patients have another GP they visit.
‘Seeing people over time, getting to know them, their family and kids – it’s one of the real joys and privileges of being a GP,’ she told newsGP.
‘That ongoing relationship is very important. When patients find a GP they really like, they’re really loyal. If they move house, they’ll keep coming even if it’s a long distance.’
But Dr Wilson, Chair of the RACGP Specific Interests Addiction Medicine network, is well aware that many of her long-term patients have another GP they visit.
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Do we need a new word for discharge summaries?
Transition of care documents, clinical handovers - it doesn't matter what we call them they just need to be a down-and-dirty quick take that doctors have time to read
Dr Hans Duvefelt
22nd February 2019
Do we need a new word for discharge summaries?
In this country, the US, we bulked them up and renamed them 'Transition of Care Documents' and they made life more complicated in many ways.
The Australians are thinking of a different name: I ran into an Australian video clip on Twitter that proposes a renaming of the hospital discharge summary.
It advocates for the term 'Clinical Handover' and stresses the importance of timely summaries from the hospital to the primary care provider as readmission rates are exceedingly high when discharge summaries are not issued on the same day the patient leaves the hospital.
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‘Now, the hard work starts.’
The Australian Digital Health Agency and PSA have welcomed the news that nine out of 10 Australians will have a My Health Record
But Opposition health spokesperson Catherine King says the figures show the Coalition Government has “botched” its rollout.
The ADHA announced that based on the number of people eligible for Medicare as at 31 January 2019 – 25,459,544 – the participation rate is at 90.1%, with a national opt-out rate of 9.9%.
This means 2,517,921 Australians opted out of the system by the end of the opt-out period on 31 January.
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We need to get the digital basics right and quickly: Tim Kelsey
Hafizah Osman | 21 Feb 2019 ADHA Propaganda
With many real-world problems still present in Australian healthcare, the time for change in healthcare is now, according to Australian Digital Health Agency Chief Executive Tim Kelsey.
Speaking at the recent AFR Healthcare Summit, Kelsey said the industry must make take the action needed to improve access to digital health instead of disrupting it.
“Delivering on digital health is not easy, there are many challenges ahead of us. The reality is, the world of fax machines is not safe and does not empower us to take more control of our health environment. A world of fax machines is not a world for precision medicines,” he said.
“The time for action is now. We’ve got the mandate and we have the strategy. We just need to get the digital basics right and quickly.”
A key issue, Kelsey said, was the need for secure digital messaging.
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‘The crooks are ahead’: Cabrini breach a warning for Australia
12 February, 2019
A major data breach at Melbourne’s Cabrini hospital has highlighted that “the crooks are well ahead” in cyberspace, Neil Mitchell has warned.
The malware, thought to have originated in Russia or North Korea, scrambled the medical files of more than 15,000 patients at Cabrini’s heart clinic.
Medical industry IT consultant Paul Power told Neil Mitchell there are 900,000 access points to the My Health Record, which could fall victim to a similar attack.
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Why aren't you encrypting your data?
- 20 February 2019
- Written by Stephen Withers
Regulations surrounding data breaches mean more organisations should be using encryption to protect the information they hold, it has been suggested.
Is encryption too hard for SMEs? "Yes and no," says Sophos director of product marketing Anthony Merry.
Easy-to-use full disk encryption is a standard feature of Windows and macOS, and can be managed centrally or individually. And Android and iOS devices use encryption by default, he says.
Without full disk encryption, a miscreant can remove the drive and connect it to another computer to read the data. If the disk is encrypted, the data on the drive is meaningless without the key.
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My Health Record opt-out doubles to 2.5 million people
By Dana McCauley
February 20, 2019 — 6.21pm
The number of Australians who opted out of the My Health Record system doubled after the deadline was extended by three months, hitting 2.5 million people on January 31.
It means there are now 23.2 million Australians signed up for the controversial digital health system, after 1.4 million people scrambled to opt out after the federal government’s original planned end date of October 31.
The deadline was extended amid security and privacy concerns, pending a Senate inquiry that resulted in new legislation to tighten up protections for patients, including ensuring that police may not access a person's health information without a warrant.
Opposition health spokeswoman Catherine King claimed the figures showed the government had "rushed its implementation of an opt-out model", undermining public support for "a system that could deliver enormous health benefits for all Australians".
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My Health Record opt-outs top 2.5m as service moves to 'evolving' choice
By political reporter Jackson Gothe-Snape
One in 10 people with a Medicare card have chosen to opt out of the new My Health Record digital health system, more than 2.5 million Australians in total.
Key points:
- 2.5 million Australians have opted out of the My Health Record system
- The Government claims despite the controversy, opt-outs are in line with expectations
- Although the opt-out period has closed, Australians can still have their digital records cancelled
The scheme allows digital records to be shared between providers to improve the effectiveness of health care, but the rollout has been plagued with controversy.
The initial opt-out period was extended after privacy and security fears were raised and Australians reported difficulty in opting out.
Despite these issues, Caroline Edwards from the Department of Health said the result was in line with expectations.
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Millions opt-out of My Health Record
By Justin Hendry on Feb 20, 2019 4:24PM
ADHA reveals final figure.
More than 2.5 million Australian’s eligible for a personal electronic health record have opted-out of the federal government persistently troubled and controversial My Health Record scheme.
Fronting senate estimates on Wednesday, Australian Digital Health Agency chief Tim Kelsey revealed that 2,517,921 individuals elected not to have an e-health record created as at the conclusion of the opt-out period on January 31, 2019.
This is just under ten percent of the 25,459,544 individuals eligible for Medicare, which is broadly where the agency had hoped to arrive at the conclusion of the opt-out window.
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More than 2.5 million Australians have opted out of My Health Record
The figure is almost bang-on with 10 percent expectations the Health Minister has previously expressed.
The Australian Digital Health Agency (ADHA) has finally updated the number of Australians that have chosen to not use the nation's My Health Record system, telling Senate Estimates on Wednesday the figure now stood at a touch over 2.5 million.
"90 percent of Australian Medicare users have not opted out," Deputy Secretary of Health Systems Policy and Primary Care at the Department of Health Caroline Edwards said.
Using what ADHA CEO Tim Kelsey labelled a conservative metric, the number of Medicare card users in Australia, and potentially total My Health Record users, at January 31 was just under 25.5 million.
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It's time political parties lost their cushy exemption from privacy laws
By David Crowe
February 18, 2019 — 11.45pm
Australians have just been given a dramatic reminder of a weakness that could easily compromise the election campaign due within months.
Voters have no reason to think their political parties are robust enough to withstand a foreign hack of their computer systems in the way that undermined the 2016 US presidential election.
The computer servers of Australia’s major political parties have been hit by a cyber-attack with a “sophisticated state actor” suspected to be behind the plot, says the prime minister.
It is not outlandish to expect an attempt to hack into an Australian political party, find out what it knows about individual voters and use that to spread propaganda on social media like the Russian campaign in America three years ago.
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Health sector tops notifiable data breaches
Tuesday, 19 February, 2019
When it comes to data breaches, the health industry is in the unenviable position of topping the notifiable data breaches for the last quarter of 2018, according to the latest report from the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC).
Of the 262 data breaches involving personal information reported to the OAIC, 54 (20.6%) were from private health service providers. The health sector breaches were caused by human error or malicious or criminal attack.
Under the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme, organisations and agencies regulated under the Privacy Act must notify individuals and the OAIC when data breaches are likely to result in serious harm. The leading cause of notifiable data breaches in the December quarter was malicious or criminal attack (168 notifications), followed by human error (85 notifications) and system error (nine notifications).
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“Data portability” is coming to Australia
Significant changes are currently underway to Australian privacy law which are intended to boost competition in a number of important sectors of the Australian economy and to improve consumer choice and control over their data.
The Treasury Laws Amendment (Consumer Data Right) Bill 2019 was tabled in Parliament earlier this week. If passed, the bill will introduce a new “Consumer Data Right” (CDR) in Australia. The CDR will give both individual and business consumers expanded rights of access to data held about them by businesses. It will also give such consumers access to data about products and enable them to share such data with accredited third party recipients.
The introduction of the CDR was recommended in march 2017 by the Productivity Commission in its report entitled Inquiry Reported to Data Availability and Use and it was endorsed by the Federal Government in its partial response to that report in November 2017. Meanwhile, the then Treasurer commissioned a Review into Open Banking in Australia 2017, which resulted in a recommendation that “Open Banking” (essentially the application of the CDR in the banking sector) be implemented through a broader CDR framework.
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My Health Record reflects 'new consensus', says CEO Tim Kelsey
By Bo Seo
Updated Feb 19, 2019 — 1.31pm, first published at 1.14pm ADHA Propaganda
The government's controversial My Health Record was part of a "new consensus" on digital health, said chief executive of the Australian Digital Health Agency (ADHA), the government body tasked with its implementation.
Tim Kelsey told The Australian Financial Review Healthcare Summit on Tuesday that despite many individuals' decision to opt-out of My Health Record, the system and the national strategy behind it enjoyed support across government, industry, and communities.
Without providing an update on individual opt-outs, Mr Kelsey said 84 per cent of community pharmacies and 75 per cent of public hospitals were connected to My Health Record.
"Time for action [on digital health] is now. We have the mandate. We have the strategy," Mr Kelsey said.
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Questions over DTA's govt-wide IT oversight function
By Justin Hendry on Feb 19, 2019 11:48AM
After $34m national biometrics system collapse.
Questions have been raised over the Digital Transformation Agency’s ability to intervene in failing government IT projects following the downfall of the national biometrics database last year.
In senate estimates overnight Labor Senator Jenny McAllister confronted the government’s lead on IT policy and procurement over its oversight of projects as part of its digital investment review process.
Her questioning centred around the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission’s (ACIC) junked biometrics identification services (BIS) project, which the auditor-general last month characterised as “deficient in almost every significant respect”.
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10 signs you are the target of a scammer
Aussies lost more than $10 million to scammers in 2018 - follow these tips to avoid being conned
Damien Manuel
19th February 2019
Our evolutionary past makes us susceptible to scams. Humans are curious social animals, which means we are more trusting than we should be.
That’s especially the case when we’re dealing with people over the phone, email or via SMS, where we don’t have the normal body language cues we would subconsciously process when making decisions.
We are also susceptible to fear and other psychological tools scammers use to create a sense of urgency that tricks us into making irrational decisions.
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Farewell tech utopia: how governments are readying the web for war
By Peter Hartcher
February 19, 2019 — 12.00am
As Australia loses its internet innocence in a state of mild surprise and confusion, other countries already have moved far beyond the concept of a worldwide web.
There are five key points. First, while the federal government is being very coy about naming the "malicious state actor" that attacked the parliament house email system as well as the systems of the major political parties, let's be straightforward. It's China. I've had this confirmed by multiple authoritative sources.
The computer servers of Australia’s major political parties have been hit by a cyber-attack with a “sophisticated state actor” suspected to be behind the plot, says the prime minister.
The political question that arises immediately is why won't the government name the aggressor?
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A state actor has targeted Australian political parties – but that shouldn’t surprise us
February 18, 2019 10.44pm AEDT
Prime Minister Morrison said there was no evidence of electoral interference linked to a hack of the Australian Parliament House computer network. from www.shutterstock.com
Author
PhD Candidate, UNSW Canberra Cyber, Australian Defence Force Academy, UNSW
The Australian political digital infrastructure is a target in an ongoing nation state cyber competition which falls just below the threshold of open conflict.
Today Prime Minister Scott Morrison made a statement to parliament, saying:
The Australian Cyber Security Centre recently identified a malicious intrusion into the Australian Parliament House computer network.
During the course of this work, we also became aware that the networks of some political parties - Liberal, Labor and the Nationals - have also been affected.
But cyber measures targeting Australian government infrastructure are the “new normal”. It’s the government response which is the most unique thing about this recent attack.
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From: Justin Warren
February 18, 2019
Dear Australian Digital Health Agency,
If possible, please treat this as an informal or administrative request. Otherwise, please treat this as a formal request for documents under the Freedom of Information Act 1982.
I request a copy of documents that contain the technical explanation of how the My Health Record system ensures that when a person cancels their My Health Record that any record that includes health information that is included in the My Health Record of the person is destroyed, including any backups, copies, or previous versions.
I restrict my request to finalised (not draft or work-in-progress) documents as at 1 Feb 2018.
I request that the documents be provided in electronic form.
I am available to discuss this request via the telephone if you provide me with a number to call.
Yours faithfully,
Justin Warren
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Labor warns consumer data right could become second 'My Health' debacle
By James Eyers
Updated Feb 18, 2019 — 4.29pm, first published at 4.18pm
Labor has warned the government's consumer data right risks turning into another My Health debacle and is calling for more intense scrutiny of the bill to ensure privacy concerns from both consumer groups and banks are addressed.
Legislation to create a right for customers to move banking, telecommunications and energy data to accredited recipients to find better deals, was last week referred to a Senate committee due to report by March 18.
Labor shadow minister for the digital economy, Ed Husic, described this as an "exceptionally unreasonable timeline", given Labor is "deeply uncomfortable" about aspects of the bill. It is likely to be debated in the House of Representatives this week and considered by the Senate in its budget sitting in early April.
Labor is questioning Treasury's oversight of the privacy impact assessment process, the potential for customers to be charged for data access, and the inclusion of "derived data", which banks fear will strip them of intellectual property. The Senate economics legislation committee should also have time to examine the impact of risk-based pricing on low-income borrowers.
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Doctors trained for health record
18 Feb 2019, midnight ADHA Propaganda
A total of 343 doctors in Gippsland have received training and are now ready to assist patients with their My Health Record.
The opt-out period for the digital health record scheme for patients ended on January 31.
Over the coming weeks the Australian Digital Health Agency will begin reconciling data from people who opted out from having a My Health Record who live in remote and rural locations including those without access to a computer.
At the same time, those who either registered to have their records or did not opt out before the January deadline will have their My Health Records created in the coming weeks.
A spokeswoman from ADHA said starting this month a My Health Record would be created for those who did not opt out but assured their medical history would not be uploaded "automatically".
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UK MPs issue damning report Facebook, call for independent ethical oversight
Inquiry sparked by Cambridge Analytica scandal issues report
Facebook and other big tech companies should be subject to a compulsory code of ethics to tackle the spread of fake news, the abuse of users' data and the bullying of smaller firms, British lawmakers said on Monday.
In a damning report that singled out Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg for what it said was a failure of leadership and personal responsibility, the UK parliament's Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee said the companies had proved ineffective in stopping harmful content and disinformation on their platforms.
"The guiding principle of the 'move fast and break things' culture often seems to be that it is better to apologize than ask permission," committee chairman Damian Collins said.
"We need a radical shift in the balance of power between the platforms and the people."
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The Australian Women and Digital Health Project: comprehensive report of findings
27 Jan 2019
A range of digital technologies are available to people to find, share and generate health-related information. Few studies have directed attention specifically to how women are using these technologies from the diverse array available to them. Even fewer have focused on Australian women’s use of digital health technologies. The Australian Women and Digital Health Project aimed to investigate which types of digital technologies women used regularly for health-related purposes and which they found most helpful and useful. Qualitative methods – semi-structured interviews and focus groups that were recorded and transcribed for analysis – were employed to shed light on the situated complexities of the participants’ enactments of digital health technologies. The project was comprised of two separate studies, including a total of 66 women (age range from 21 to 74 years). In study 1, 36 women living in the city of Canberra took part in face-to-face interviews and focus groups, while study 2 involved telephone interviews with 30 women from other areas of Australia. A feminist new materialism theoretical approach was used to analyse the interview and focus group transcripts.
The findings demonstrate the nuanced and complex ways in which the participants were engaging with and contributing to online sources of information and using these sources together with face-to-face encounters with doctors and other healthcare professionals and friends and family members. They highlight the lay forms of expertise that the women had developed in finding, assessing and creating health knowledges. The findings also emphasise the key role that many women play in providing advice and health care for family members not only as digitally engaged patients but also as digitally engaged carers. Many women reported using internet resources to provide health advice and support to family members and friends as well as receiving advice as part of their existing caring and social relationships.
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Comments welcome!
David.
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