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
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The tempo of news has picked up a little, with security and data breaches featuring a fair bit as well as script tracking software.
Nothing to scare the horses however and we will soon see what is planned for the #myHR after the election! No change seems to be the outcome!
Can’t wait to see how long it takes for the new government to say it is thrilled with the ADHA, Kelsey and the My Health Record!
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Another state flags compulsory script-tracking software
The Queensland model will be similar to SafeScript in Victoria
15th May 2019
Another state has revealed plans to tackle doctor-shopping — including fines for GPs who do not check real-time script-tracking software before prescribing dangerous drugs.
Following in the footsteps of Tasmania and Victoria, the Queensland Government introduced draft legislation on Tuesday to lay the foundations of the state’s script-tracking system.
The legislation says the system will be mandatory, with doctors and pharmacists required to check a patient’s history or face fines of up to $2600.
However, exemptions will be included if doctors have a “reasonable excuse”, such as treatment of an injury in an emergency or circumstances where the patient is unlikely to be doctor-shopping, such as pain relief for end-of-life care for terminal cancer.
There are few details on how the system will be integrated into GP software or whether hospitals will be obliged to upload details of medicines given to patients on discharge.
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Qld to introduce real-time drug tracking system
Latest to commit to stopping 'doctor shopping'.
The Queensland government will introduce a real-time prescription monitoring system to combat ‘doctor shopping’ and reduce preventable deaths across the state.
The database, proposed in legislation introduced to parliament on Tuesday, intends to aid clinical decision-making for pharmacists and doctors prescribing or supplying “dependence-forming medicines”.
“The [Medicines and Poisons Bill 2019] will allow Queensland Health to implement a real-time prescription monitoring system,” Minister for Health Dr Steven Miles told the Queensland Parliament.
“The database will monitor prescribing of certain dependence-forming medicines such as pharmaceutical opioids and other prescription only medicines.”
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Victoria deploys SafeScript to reduce drug overdoses
Nathan Eddy | 14 May 2019
Victoria has started to roll out a cloud-based real-time prescription monitoring system called SafeScript, available to medical practitioners and pharmacists, to help fatal drug overdoses from prescription medication.
Developed by specialist pharmacy solution provider Fred IT Group and powered with Microsoft technology, SafeScript offers doctors and pharmacists a real-time alerting capability.
If the system detects that a patient has gone to multiple providers for the same medicine over a short period of time, or they are using a risky combination of medicines that elevates the risk of overdose, it will automatically raise an alert.
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Denham Sadler
May 13, 2019
Labor $15m digital health commitment
Election 2019
Labor will fund a new health technology accelerator and medical simulation facilities in Melbourne’s south-east as part of a $15 million digital health election commitment.
Shadow health minister Catherine King, shadow digital economy minister Ed Husic and Labor candidate for Dunkley Peta Murphy will make announce the election announcement in Frankston on Monday morning.
The $15.3 million in federal funding will go towards health technology initiatives in the Frankston-Peninsula region through the new Health Solutions Fund.
Under the election commitment, a new health tech accelerator - PenStart - will be established, along with new simulation facilities at Monash University’s Peninsula Campus.
PenStart will “kickstart local startup activity”, while the simulation facilities will help to test out new models of healthcare, the Opposition said.
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https://www.itnews.com.au/news/labor-finally-reveals-position-on-fate-of-dta-digital-identity-525203
Labor finally reveals position on fate of DTA, digital identity
By Julian Bajkowski on May 15, 2019 1:28PM
Husic argues changes needed.
The Digital Transformation Agency will be spared the axe if Labor is elected, but the government’s internal technology champion and watchdog is likely to have its role and structure substantially shaken-up to realign it with different policy objectives.
That’s the direct take from Ed Husic, Labor’s shadow minister for the digital economy who finally put some lean meat on Labor’s bare-bones technology policy, drawing a big question mark over where the government’s pursuit of a national digital identity rollout is headed in the process.
Speaking on the sidelines of a start-up forum hosted by InnovationAus in Sydney on Tuesday, Husic told iTnews Labor had been supportive of the DTO and DTA from its inception under former PM Malcolm Turnbull, but the continued bungling of major government tech projects has Labor worried.
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Australians’ Medicare details illegally sold on darknet – two years after breach exposed
Medicare Madness listing suggests details ‘of any living Australian citizen’ have been available since September 2018
Thu 16 May 2019 04.00 AEST Last modified on Thu 16 May 2019 04.01 AEST
Australians’ Medicare details are still being illegally offered for sale on the darknet, almost two years after Guardian Australia revealed the serious privacy breach.
Screenshots of the Empire Market, provided to Guardian Australia, show the vendor Medicare Machine has rebranded as Medicare Madness, offering Medicare details for $US21.
Other vendors charge up to $US340 by offering fake Medicare cards alongside other fake forms of identification – such as a New South Wales licence.
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Dr Google mostly wrong on eye disorders: study
Online symptom checkers are a 'starting point but very inaccurate'
10th May 2019
People looking to a popular online symptom checker for answers about eye problems often get a wrong diagnosis, a small study suggests.
While some studies have already documented many ways that symptom checkers can mislead patients, less is known about how well they work specifically for eye conditions, the researchers note in JAMA Ophthalmology.
For the current study, they tested how often an online symptom checker offered by WebMD generated the correct diagnosis for 42 clinical vignettes similar to situations that patients might describe to doctors in person.
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Wednesday, 15 May 2019 10:23
CSIRO team says top websites could host malicious activity
Researchers from the CSIRO's Data61 digital arm say they have found that about half of the most popular websites are at risk of malicious activity because they depend on a number of third parties for ad provision, tracking and analytics services and content distribution networks.
Further, these third-party sites could, in turn, be dependent on resources from other domains, leading to a dependency chain of more than 30 domains - all underpinned by a form of implicit trust with the original website.
And the bigger and more complex the dependency chain, the greater the threat of malicious activity, the researchers concluded.
Professor Dali Kaafar, Information Security and Privacy research leader at CSIRO’s Data61 and scientific director of Optus Macquarie University Cyber Security Hub, said that although these webs of dependency were common and due to web design decisions, the implications on security and privacy were often overlooked.
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NSW hospital to pilot point of care project with Apple devices
Nathan Eddy | 15 May 2019
At the 325-bed Wagga Wagga Base Hospital in New South Wales eHealth NSW and Murrumbidgee Local Health District are partnering on two point of care pilot projects.
At the Wagga Wagga hospital a team of 10 clinicians is currently running a trial of mobile notifications of real-time pathology results and risk indicators, through the Miya Precision Clinical Decision Support (CDS) tool created by Alcidion.
The CSIRO’s re-admission risk algorithm will use the data supplied and make the results available through the Miya platform, and notifications will be delivered through Apple products, including iPad, iPhone and Apple Watch.
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New lease of life for troubled Adelaide AI firm
Bension Siebert @Bension1
EXCLUSIVE | The directors of a struggling Adelaide artificial intelligence company – including former My Health Record boss Jim Birch – have agreed to spend $400,000 to revive it, despite an assessment by Flinders University that its intellectual property has “little value”.
Adelaide Thursday May 16, 2019
The company, Clevertar, offers digital avatar technology to other businesses, allowing customers and healthcare consumers to interact with “virtual humans” online.
The online avatars are, according to Clevertar’s website, “human-like conversation partners interacting with people through speech, gaze, gesture, and other behaviours that can communicate not just meaning, but also attentiveness, positive affect, and attraction”.
The software – originally developed by, and spun off from, Flinders University – earned the Adelaide company a gong for Best Startup Tech Innovation at the Talent Unleashed Awards in 2016.
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak reportedly praised Clevertar’s ‘Anne Cares’ product at the ceremony.
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Adelaide’s Clevertar digital avatar business out of administration
Valerina Changarathil, The Advertiser
May 16, 2019 2:42pm
Digital healthcare-focused ‘avatars’ creator Clevertar will trade as a going concern following finalisation of a two-month-long external administration process.
Clevertar, a Flinders University-backed award-winning business that received multiple taxpayer grants and international recognition, including from Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, was placed in voluntary administration on March 28.
Clevertar’s virtual agents provide support to patients with chronic conditions at a fraction of the cost of human intervention. Its flagship product is Anna Cares, an online platform designed to motivate patients through mobile and tablet reminders and support.
Pitcher Partners’ Michael Basedow was appointed administrator after talks with a major creditor broke down.
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https://www.zdnet.com/article/husic-says-labor-is-committed-to-reforming-australias-encryption-laws/
Husic says Labor is committed to reforming Australia's encryption laws
Shadow Minister for the Digital Economy Ed Husic has reminded voters of his party's tech-related plans, including its commitment to tweaking Australia's encryption laws.
Days before the federal election, Shadow Minister for the Digital Economy Ed Husic has taken the opportunity to reaffirm that "win, lose, or draw" the Australia Labor Party will be reforming the Telecommunications and Other Legislation Amendment (Assistance and Access) Act.
Saying the Bill was having a "devastating" impact locally while speaking with media in Sydney on Tuesday, Husic said it was the federal opposition's commitment to push through changes, rather than repealing it.
"Firstly, this has been an awful Bill in the way it was rammed -- put through Parliament. I know a lot of people feel very strongly about Labor's role in that," he said, pointing to Labor's capitulation.
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Bupa touts customer experience in digital transformation
The healthcare provider said it was important to understand why its customers were engaging before adopting technology for technology's sake.
Global healthcare provider Bupa offers a whole range of services, including healthcare, dental, and aged-care facilities. Often when people engage with a company like Bupa, it's at a time that's very difficult in their life, dealing with health challenges or aged-care facilities for loved ones.
Increasingly aware of this, Bupa's Australia and New Zealand arm had isolated technology as a potentially challenging factor in the environment it operates in, and did not want to risk its adoption getting in the way of customer experience.
According to chief information officer Sami Yalavac, a digital transformation needed to put customer experience at the forefront of everything adopted by the organisation.
Bupa has overhauled its digital and data strategies, and embraced hybrid cloud, business analytics, and artificial intelligence (AI), with Yalavac saying it was important these moves towards transformation were made through a customer-focused lens.
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Doctors get EMR access via app at Southern Cross
Wednesday, 15 May 2019
eHealthNews.nz editor Rebecca McBeth
Southern Cross Hospitals is providing doctors with access to its electronic medical record remotely and via a mobile app.
Southern Cross Hospitals has implemented an electronic medical record called Clinical Workstation using software provided by Orion Health. This is moving clinical processes from paper to digital across the entire Southern Cross Hospital network, including 10 wholly owned comprehensive hospitals and four joint-venture hospitals.
Southern Cross Hospitals and Orion Health last year developed an innovation hub utilising a collaborative working group of up to 16 health and IT professionals with a clear focus of developing new functionality for the EMR.
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New Release of InterSystems TrakCare Offers Mobile-Enabled User Interface to All Clinical Workflows
Unified healthcare information system now built on InterSystems IRIS for Health to offer FHIR, SMART on FHIR support, and even greater scalability
SYDNEY, Australia, May 16, 2019 – InterSystems, a global leader in information technology platforms for health, business and government applications, today announced that the latest release of InterSystems TrakCare® extends mobile capabilities for the unified healthcare information system.
The latest version of TrakCare extends the mobile-enabled user interface introduced in 2018 to all clinical workflows, improving the user experience wherever care is delivered. New mobile functionality includes support for operating theatre bookings and administration, maternity and nursing care plans, and delivers dynamic patient lists, a patient journey tracker and additional graphing capabilities.
What’s more, the company announced today that it has built this newest version of TrakCare on its new InterSystems IRIS for Health data platform, which boosts systems interoperability, cloud scalability and healthcare big data capabilities.
“Data volumes are growing faster in healthcare than any other industry, and the move to IRIS for Health ensures that TrakCare is more interoperable, faster and more scalable than ever,” said Christine Chapman, Vice President for TrakCare at InterSystems. “In addition to traditional interoperability standards like HL7 and SDA, we can now operate through FHIR standards.”
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The latest version of TrakCare extends the mobile-enabled user interface introduced in 2018 to all clinical workflows, improving the user experience wherever care is delivered. New mobile functionality includes support for operating theatre bookings and administration, maternity and nursing care plans, and delivers dynamic patient lists, a patient journey tracker and additional graphing capabilities.
What’s more, the company announced today that it has built this newest version of TrakCare on its new InterSystems IRIS for Health data platform, which boosts systems interoperability, cloud scalability and healthcare big data capabilities.
“Data volumes are growing faster in healthcare than any other industry, and the move to IRIS for Health ensures that TrakCare is more interoperable, faster and more scalable than ever,” said Christine Chapman, Vice President for TrakCare at InterSystems. “In addition to traditional interoperability standards like HL7 and SDA, we can now operate through FHIR standards.”
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CEDA Health - Digital health: a human imperative, Melbourne, 29 May 2019
Join Australian Digital Health Agency Chief Executive Tim Kelsey, for the latest update on the implementation of Australia’s National Digital Health Strategy and the vision for digital health. This event is being held on the 29 May 2019 at the Sofitel on Collins Street, Latrobe Ballroom, Melbourne.
Event overview
What are the big opportunities to integrate digital health services and improve patient health outcomes?
We discuss the Agency’s latest work on My Health Record, secure messaging between disparate clinical information systems, and wider health system interoperability.
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Monday, 13 May 2019 11:36
Phishing biggest security threat facing Australian businesses: report
Phishing is seen by more than one in four (44%) of Australian businesses as the biggest security threats they face, with ransomware, password and business email compromise continuing to beset organisations, according to a newly published survey.
And according to the survey commissioned by security intelligence firm LogRhythm, Australian chief information security officers continue to struggle to combat a rising climate of cybersecurity compromise, often taking weeks to detect and deal with security breaches.
The survey - conducted between February and April this year – found that more than half (55%) of respondents said they were able to detect their last security incident within hours, while 16% said it had taken them up to a week to detect their last security incident – and 7% had taken even longer.
“These delays really do raise serious concerns for Australian businesses, which since the introduction of the Notifiable Data Breaches (NDB) scheme, have been legally obliged to detect and report on breaches as rapidly as possible,” said Joanne Wong, Marketing Director Asia Pacific and Japan, LogRhythm.
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Over 10 million people hit in single Australian data breach: OAIC
The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner's quarterly data breach report also revealed private health was again the country's most affected sector.
The latest quarterly data breach report from the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) has revealed over 10 million individuals had their information compromised in one single incident. The current population of Australia is around 25.4 million.
The breach was disclosed to the OAIC under the Notifiable Data Breaches (NDB) scheme between January 1, 2019, and March 31, 2019 and reported in its Quarterly Statistics Report [PDF].
While the report did not detail the origin of the breach that affected over 10 million individuals, it did show that the most number of affected individuals from a single finance-related breach was less than 500,000 and the health sector's three heaviest impacting breaches affected less than 5,000 individuals each.
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Monday, 13 May 2019 20:17
More than 10m affected in single breach during March quarter
The number of data breaches — 215 — reported to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner for the March quarter was lower than any of the previous three quarters, but one breach resulted in more than 10 million individuals being affected, leading to speculation that this could have been the Marriott breach which was first reported in December last year.
No estimate of the number of people affected in Australia by this breach was ever provided by Marriott.
The OAIC only lists statistics of the breaches each quarter and said in the latest report that from 1 July onwards such reports would be issued every six months. The report was released as the OAIC marked Australian Privacy Awareness Week, which runs from 12 to 18 May.
For the March quarter, malicious or criminal attacks were the largest source of data breaches, accounting for 61% of all breaches.
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Healthcare leads in data breaches, security issues, report finds
Nathan Eddy | 18 May 2019
The healthcare sector is still widely vulnerable to cybersecurity issues, even though the overall rate of data breaches in Australia has fallen, according to a report from the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC).
While the average volume of 72 breaches per month was down significantly from 242 in the first full quarter of reporting, the report revealed that the healthcare sector – which reported 58 breaches—was well ahead of finance (27), legal (23), education (19) and retail (11).
Overall, the OAIC report found the leading cause of data breaches during the 12-month period was phishing, causing 153 breaches, but more than a third of all notifiable data breaches were directly due to human error.
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Human Services restructures CIO group
Exclusive: CTO function separated.
The Department of Human Services has restructured its chief information officer group in preparation for the development of its next-generation technology strategy.
The shake-up, which occurred last month, has replaced the CIOG’s chief technology office with two separate divisions focused on strategy and implementation and architecture and innovation.
It follows former ANZ architecture executive Michael McNamara joining the government’s largest IT operation as its permanent chief information officer in January.
McNamara replaced former chief technology officer Charles McHardie, who had been acting in the CIO role since the departure of long-time tech chief Gary Sterrenberg in January 2018 and has also since left the department.
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Australians downloading 1.7 exabytes a month
5.06 exabytes downloaded in last quarter of 2018
The first of a new series of reports from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) detailing Internet usage confirms that downloads are continuing to soar. In the three months ended 31 December, Australians downloaded 5,061,987 terabytes of data according to figures compiled by the ACCC.
That’s 5.06 exabytes — or close to an average of 1.7 exabytes a month for the period considered in the ACCC’s Internet Activity Report.
The ACCC report is effectively the successor to the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ quarterly release of Internet activity data. The final ABS release of data, covering the three months to June 2018, revealed that Australians had downloaded 4.08 exabytes over the quarter (an average of 1.36 exabytes a month).
The figures are not directly comparable, however, as the ACCC is collecting data from fewer telcos than the ABS. In addition, the ACCC said that some of the relevant data providers had made changes to internal reporting systems, improving the accuracy of the metrics they report.
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Tuesday, 14 May 2019 10:50
Mobile handsets preferred by Australian consumers to access Internet: report
Mobile handsets continue to be the most common way Australian consumers are accessing the internet while the largest volume of data is downloaded over fixed lines, according to a new data report on internet activity by the ACCC.
The data report on internet activity by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission for the period ending 31 December 2018, also provides information on the number of retail services in operation (SIOs) by connection type and download speeds as well as the volume of data downloaded within Australia.
The total number of retail SIOs reached 39.9 million as at the end of last year - 24.3 million of these were mobile handsets, 8.4 million were wireless broadband and 7.2 million were fixed-line/wired broadband.
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Mobile networks are a threat to NBN: Optus CEO
May 15, 2019 — 10.28am
Mobile technology is now a real threat to the national broadband network and any analysis of the potential for competitors to enter the market must consider this fact, says Singtel Optus chief executive Allen Lew.
His comments came as Vodafone and TPG prepare to mount a legal challenge to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission's surprise decision last week to block a proposed merger between the two firms.
ACCC chairman Rod Sims' grounds for blocking the merger were that it would prevent TPG building Australia's fourth mobile network, and therefore reduce competition.
Ratings agency Moody's said the decision was "credit positive" for Telstra and Optus in the medium term, because it would "lower the risk of a price war" and give them a head start on building their 5G networks while Vodafone and TPG were preoccupied with the court challenge. But it said the long-term effects were less certain.
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ACCC ditches plan to monitor dark fibre services
Competition in NBN aggregation services addresses ACCC concerns
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) says it won’t implement a proposed rule that would have required telcos to provide it with a range of data relating to dark fibre and NBN wholesale aggregation services.
The commission conducted a public consultation on the proposed record keeping rule (RKRs), which were focused on services to NBN Points of Interconnect (POIs).
The dark fibre RKR would have covered Telstra, TPG (including AAPT), Nextgen, Vocus, Optus and Superloop, requiring them to report the number and distance of links, the NBN POI at which a link terminates, and prices charged for a link during a reporting period.
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Enjoy!
David.
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