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This weekly blog is to
explore the larger issues around Digital Health, data security, data privacy
and related matters.
I will also try to
highlight ADHA Propaganda when I come upon it.
Just so we keep count,
the latest Notes from the ADHA Board are dated 6 December, 2018! Secrecy
unconstrained! This is really the behavior of a federal public agency gone
rogue!
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Big data, social media and your suburb
Aug 16, 2019
— 8.00pm
On
August 4th, Kamilla van der Velde took her puppy for a Sunday morning stroll
down at Sydney's Balmoral Beach.
Blown
away by the beauty of the winter sun glistening over the water, the 46-year-old
Danish-Australian took a video, uploaded it to Instagram, and tagged her
location.
Like
millions of Australians, each time Mrs van der Velde posts about her puppy,
morning coffee, or the Danish jewellery brand she works for, she generates a
piece of data.
For
the past decade, we have heard a lot about how the data economy is poised to
supposedly transform whole industries. Marketers have been early and
predominant adopters, which explains all those highly targeted ads you see
online.
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Why our new “long term national health plan” does not deserve its name
Melissa
Sweet on: August 14, 2019In: climate change,
Global health and
climate change, Healthcare and health
reform, rural and remote health
The
image above indicates how much Australia’s new “long term national health plan”
has to say about a critical health threat confronting us, now and into the
future: climate change.
It
also indicates what journalists asked about this pressing health issue
following Minister Greg Hunt’s presentation
to the National Press Club today.
Perhaps
they missed the news that “climate change
is the greatest health challenge of the 21st century, and threatens all aspects
of the society in which we live”.
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NSW government works on AI strategy, ethics framework
State government examines role of AI in policymaking
The New South Wales government is developing a strategy for the
use of artificial intelligence (AI) technology as well as an AI ethics
framework.
The state government announced today it will stage a summit
dedicated to the ethical implications of AI and how NSW can best employ AI to
support policymaking.
“AI has the potential to transform service delivery and make life
easier for people, and this summit is an opportunity to learn from some of the
country’s top experts,” customer service minister Victor Dominello said in a
statement.
“AI is already being used to manage the NSW train fleet, predict
the future location of bushfires and predict water pipe failure,” the minister
said.
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Australian Digital Health Agency visits our region
Thursday, 15
August 2019 ADHA Propaganda
Today we welcomed the Australian Digital Health Agency to our PHN to learn more about the use of My Health Record on the ground.
Today
we welcomed the Australian Digital Health Agency’s CEO Tim Kelsey, Chief
Medical Advisor, Clinical Professor Meredith Makeham, and Education and
Clinical Use Lead Carey Doolan to our PHN to learn more about the use of My Health Record
on the ground.
COORDINARE
supported the expansion of My Health Record across the South Eastern NSW region
by raising awareness and understanding of this important initiative in our
region’s diverse communities.
This
visit provided an opportunity for Mr Kelsey, Professor Makeham and Mr Doolan to
meet with health consumers, to hear about the real life impact My Health Record
is having on their daily lives, and how it could be made more useful for
consumers and healthcare providers.
The
input from community members was highly valuable, and we thank them for sharing
their stories and suggestions of areas for improvement.
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AI is coming to healthcare – and it’s here to help
GP19 keynote speaker Dr Martin Seneviratne talks to newsGP about
the hype – and real promise – of artificial intelligence in healthcare.
‘GPs will
have a really important translator role to play between machine learning and
the broader clinical world,’ according to Dr Martin Seneviratne.
16 Aug
2019
The potential of artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare has
generated a considerable amount of excitement in recent years.
Not all of the hype is necessarily warranted, of course, but there is a real opportunity to improve healthcare if AI is used correctly.
That’s the view of Dr Martin Seneviratne, an Australian doctor turned clinical informatician.
‘There’s a lot of hype around how image-based medical specialties like dermatology and radiology will be overtaken by AI. But we’re far away from that, to be honest,’ Dr Seneviratne told newsGP.
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Not all of the hype is necessarily warranted, of course, but there is a real opportunity to improve healthcare if AI is used correctly.
That’s the view of Dr Martin Seneviratne, an Australian doctor turned clinical informatician.
‘There’s a lot of hype around how image-based medical specialties like dermatology and radiology will be overtaken by AI. But we’re far away from that, to be honest,’ Dr Seneviratne told newsGP.
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An interview
with Angela Ryan, Chief Clinical Information Officer, Australian Digital Health
Agency.
Creating better health for all Australians through digital health
By Dean Koh
August 15,
2019 08:27 PM
With
more than a decade of experience as a registered nurse, Angela Ryan combines
her clinical experience with her knowledge in health informatics towards the
practical, meaningful and integrated use of digital health tools in Australia.
In this interview with Healthcare IT News, she shares more on her role as the
Chief Clinical Information Officer (CCIO), at the Australian Digital Health
Agency (ADHA)
and talks about why the My Health Record is a key pillar in Australia’s
National Digital Health Strategy.
Could you
tell us more about your role as CCIO of ADHA and your background in healthcare?
In
my role as Chief Clinical Information Officer at the Australian Digital Health
Agency, I work collaboratively across the health system to develop and maintain
strong relationships with key stakeholders in the community to promote adoption
and meaningful clinical use of digital health services and technologies, to
deliver benefit to all Australians. A key priority is ensuring strong clinical
engagement with the National Digital Health Strategy
and associated programs and services – including the My Health Record system –
and clinical input and assurance into the design, development and delivery of
digital health systems. The role provides clinical leadership for the
implementation, advancement and optimisation of digital systems nationally.
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Breathe Easy – How My Health Record Can Help Better Manage Patients with Asthma
This
webinar will offer health care providers information on how My
Health Record can assist in the care of patients with asthma.
Learn
how My Health Record can be useful in managing patients with asthma and how it
can be of assistance to other health care providers involved in their care.
There
will be an opportunity for Q&A during this session. ADHA Propaganda
Venue:
Webinar
Date/Time:
Part day | Tue 3 Sep 2019, 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm (1hr)
Event
Organiser: Australian Digital Health Agency
Email:
Click here
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I dream of (data) genie – power, pace and paradox
14 August 2019
With ACCC chair Rod Sims declaring that the “[data] genie is out
of the bottle,” and with CDR and Open Banking on the horizon, how will brands
respond to shifting consumer preferences and data ethics? Jane Headon has
the breakdown.
Ever dreamed of having your very own
genie? You’ve probably been inspired by Aladdin, or a certain ’70s sitcom about
an astronaut and a magical bottle. Either way, a genie gives you power,
whenever you care to call on it. When Consumer Data Rights (CDR) was introduced
in July 2018, ACCC chair Rod Sims acknowledged the megatrend that is big data
and its value to businesses and individuals, observing that “the genie is out
of the bottle, now we have to decide what to do with it”.
What are these data rights, and is this
genie good or bad? And now – one year on – what have we decided about the
direction of Australian consumer data and the issues of trust, privacy and
transparency that surround it?
CDR shifts the balance of power
We have just seen the CDR law passed in
Australia – a bipartisan-supported reform which heralds the start of a seismic
shift in power dynamics between businesses and consumers. Essentially, CDR
paves the wave for consumers in selected industries to take control of their
own data. The financial services industry will be the first manifestation of
CDR, via a regime known as ‘Open Banking’. As an example, customers will be
able to take their mortgage data and offer it to other financial services
providers to compare and easily switch to better services and deals.
The broad intent of Open Banking is to
unlock innovation, disrupting the concentration of data (and therefore power)
within large organisations, such as our big four bank oligopoly, and to lower
entry barriers for a broader set of competitors, such as smaller banks and
fintechs. By allowing the opportunities to flow more broadly across a vibrant
financial services ecosystem, consumers will benefit from competition, choice
and convenient switching. It is anticipated that over time, other industries
such as energy and telecommunications will adopt CDR, further opening up the
competitive landscape in Australia.
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Digital Health Literacy
Empowering your community to manage their own health futures ADHA Propaganda
The
Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA), the ALIA Australian
Public Library Alliance (APLA), and ALIA Health Libraries Australia (HLA) have
secured $1 million in funding for libraries from the Australian Digital Health
Agency to run train the trainer programs.
ALIA,
APLA, and HLA have partnered with the Australian Digital Health Agency to
deliver a train the trainer program from September 2019 to June 2020 to support
library staff to respond to queries about government digital health programs.
This nationwide initiative will provide training to library staff on how users
can navigate and understand the new Federal Government digital health
initiatives, such as My Health Record.
Key
benefits for libraries:
- Free professional development for staff.
- Grant funding to backfill staff time and contribute towards attendance costs.
- A reportable and measurable way of aligning with council’s health and wellbeing strategies.
- Improved health information service for library patrons.
- New and enhanced relationships with local healthcare providers.
- Successful library services will be encouraged to invite staff from neighbouring council library services, health libraries and key community health organisations to participate.
We
know that people use public libraries as trusted sources of health and wellness
information. With the recent focus on My Health Record, libraries can expect increased
demand from consumers, not only for information about healthy living, health
conditions, treatment plans, therapies and medicines, but also for help
accessing digital resources.
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Tuesday, 13 August 2019 22:50
Regulatory imbalance between traditional media, digital platforms says ACCC chief
The
head of Australia’s competition regulatory authority, Rod Sims, says disruption
and dislocation in media markets - and a regulatory imbalance between
traditional media and digital platforms - should concern all Australians.
Speaking
at the Melbourne Press Club on Tuesday, the Australian Competition and Consumer
Commission (ACCC) Chair was reflecting on the recommendations in the final
report of the ACCC’s Digital Platforms Inquiry released last month, cautioning
that “while digital innovations have the potential to transform societies for
the better, there are also forms of innovation that can be harmful”.
A
number of the Inquiry’s 23 recommendations were directly focused on media and
journalism, including the establishment of a new platform-neutral regulatory
framework to ensure effective and consistent regulatory oversight of all
entities involved in content production or delivery in Australia.
“There is an
imbalance in the current regulatory treatment of content delivered via
traditional broadcasting compared to content delivered via digital platforms,
and that needs to be addressed,” Sims said.
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Penalties for privacy related breaches reach new heights
The
amount of data created each day is growing at an increasing rate. Forget about
gigabytes and terabytes, it’s reported that the digital universe currently sits
at around 4.4 zetabytes.
This is expected to reach 44 zetabytes by 2020. While this presents a number of
opportunities for entities, it also carries several risks, most notably in
relation to privacy.
Globally,
regulators are flexing their muscles and imposing higher fines for privacy
breaches than ever before. While these fines send a strong message to the
market, it remains to be seen whether alone, they will be sufficient to compel
entities to make any meaningful change to their data practices. In this
article, we cover some of the most recent enforcement actions by the US, UK and
Australian privacy regulators.
United
States
On
12 July, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced that Facebook Inc. (Facebook)
would be required to pay US$5 billion to settle charges that Facebook violated
a 2012 FTC order in which Facebook agreed to obtain the consent of users before
sharing their data beyond their privacy settings. This penalty represents the
largest of its kind ever imposed and is more than 21 times that imposed earlier
this month by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO)
on British Airways.
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Mandatory production of documents in the My Health Record system
12Aug 2019
The
My
Health Records Act 2012 (Cth) (the Act)
limits when and how health information included in a My Health Record can be
collected, used and disclosed. Unauthorised collection, use or disclosure
of My Health Record information is both a contravention of the Act and an
interference with privacy.
Section
69 of the Act states that the Australian Digital Health Agency can only be
required to disclose health information from a patient’s My Health Record to a
court, coroner or other body except in very limited circumstances, including
where the patient gives their consent.
The
Agency has recently advised that, where patient consent has not been provided,
it will apply to have any legal request (subpoena) set aside.
This
information relates to My Health Records and does not concern health
information held outside of the My Health Record system. More information
on My Health Record can be obtained from the websites of the Office of the
Australian Information Commissioner (www.oaic.gov.au) and the Australian
Digital Health Agency (www.myhealthrecord.gov.au),
including:
- Benefits of My Health Record for healthcare professionals; and
- Information for Healthcare Professionals, including General Practice, Pharmacy, Specialists, Allied Health, Pathology and Diagnostic Imaging and Aged Care.
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Legal holes and cavalier companies make a joke of data human rights
Aug 13, 2019
— 12.00am
There
are many reasons to get angry and think about chucking your smartphone into the
bin when watching the Netflix documentary The
Great Hack, which examines the Cambridge Analytica (CA) and Facebook
scandal.
But
perhaps the most worrying is the near certainty that it was just the tip of an
incredibly dangerous iceberg, that most of us - certainly in Australia - are
sailing around every day, without anything remotely resembling a life jacket.
In
the CA scandal, tens of millions of Facebook users had their personal data
harvested and used without their knowledge, in order to target key voters in
political campaigns like Brexit and the last US presidential election.
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My Health Record Storybooks launched
June
11th, 2019 ADHA
Propaganda
Categories:
Media Releases
The
Aboriginal Health & Medical Research Council of New South Wales (AH&MRC)
are proud to launch our My Health Record Storybooks which were designed
alongside the Australian Digital Health Agency.
My
Health Record is an online summary of your health information. Right now, your
health information is in different places, My Health Record helps you keep
track of your health information, securely in one place.
My Health Record
My Health Record Storybook – Youth
My Health Record Storybook – Parents/Carers
My Health Record Storybook – Adults
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The safety of computerised prescribing in hospitals
·
Melissa T Baysari, Magdalena Z
Raban
- Aust Prescr 2019;42:136-8
- 1 August 2019
- DOI: 10.18773/austprescr.2019.037
SUMMARY
The
implementation of computerised prescribing can result in large reductions in
prescribing error rates. The flow-on effects to patient outcomes are not well
studied.
The
reduction in errors is dependent on prescribers becoming proficient in using
the electronic prescribing system. All potential safety benefits are therefore
not expected to be achieved immediately.
Electronic
prescribing systems introduce new types of errors, most frequently errors in
selection. Some of these errors can be prevented if the system is well
designed.
Computerised
decision support embedded in electronic prescribing systems has enormous
potential to improve medication safety. However, current support systems have a
limited capacity to provide context-relevant advice to prescribers.
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eHealth – Making it helpful and practical
Timothy Bowen Senior Solicitor
– Advocacy, Claims & Education August 2019
eHealth has become an increasingly significant part of healthcare.
Starting
with electronic records and emails, moving onto video consultations and secure
messaging, and into apps and artificial intelligence, eHealth is ever evolving.
It
is often seen as a way of making healthcare better, safer and more efficient.
It
can do all those things, but only if done right. This is where important
issues of usability, practicality, clinical usefulness and reasonable
expectations come into play.
This
is why MIGA advocates on eHealth, most recently in the Australian Digital
Health Agency’s consultation on a national health interoperability
roadmap. We have argued for augmenting and connecting existing eHealth
systems to improve their operation, usefulness and uptake, and recognising the
central role of doctors and other health professionals in eHealth design and
development.
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How much private pathology is making it into the MHR?
August 9, 2019
Pathology giants, Sullivan Nicolaides (SNP), are now routinely uploading diagnostic test reports to patients’ My Health Record (MHR). The size and scale of the SNP set up marks an important new, and long promised, information source for the centralised patient record.
Pathology
giant, Sullivan Nicolaides (SNP), are now routinely uploading diagnostic test
reports to patients’ My Health Record (MHR). The size and scale of the SNP set
up marks an important new, and long promised, information source for the
centralised patient record.
But
it’s still hard to tell just how much private pathology is actually making it
into the MHR.
According
to SNP’s MHR-opt-out pilot site in North Queensland, workflow from pathology
request-to-report upload is functioning seamlessly.
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Rushed PIP QI scheme could create data and governance mayhem
August 9, 2019
Although well intentioned, the new PIP QI regime exposes a federal government that is underestimating the massive damage that could be done to the well being of their frontline healthcare troops in general practice and to trust in the system by a hastily cobbled together idea to move faster towards outcomes based care
The
formal launch of the Federal Department of Health’s (DoH) new Quality
Improvement Practice Incentive Program (PIP QI) regime on August 1 was
accompanied by some strongly worded protests from senior thinkers in the GP
sector and even some in the digital health sector, but it has
otherwise passed with little fanfare around the digital health world.
Some
of the questions raised which are obvious and concerning include:
- If the Australian Digital Health Agency (ADHA) has spent a fortune on a governance framework for secondary use of patient data for the My Health Record (MHR), why is none of that work in play in rolling out this secondary use scheme, given both schemes ultimately roll up to the Federal DoH?
- Without a well defined regime in play, who is ultimately responsible for ensuring governance in a system which exposes patient data (non identified) to the relative competence of all 31 Primary Health Networks (PHNs) in the country, which have huge variance in their performance and management capabilities?
- Who is responsible for overseeing any compliance from private data extraction suppliers, who are separately contracted by each PHN, and who are largely non transparent to the system because of commercial in confidence restrictions?
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Trust, data and the demonising of a health tech company
August 12, 2019
HealthEngine has made bad mistakes and mishandled its response to its patient data handling crisis, but the timing of the ACCC action against the company and the tone of its attack feel very convenient
Less
than a year ago the health practice appointments platform Health Engine was a
market leader and a market darling, by a fair margin. Having completed a
funding round with a large global VC for $27m, and with strong growth in all
its numbers it was by any measure the most successful health tech start up in
the country.
Last
week the ACCC launched a very pointed and very public attack on the group, as
part of its follow up to a series of revelations almost a year before about how
the company treated data it was collecting from patients, for reviews of
practices, and for use by upstream services providers, primarily, health
insurers.
Following
the revelations last year Health Engine didn’t exactly cover themselves in PR
crisis management glory. CEO, Dr Marcus Tan is bright, talented, driven, and by
all accounts, not the Mark Zuckerberg of Australian digital health tech. But he
did play some Facebook-like cards following the initial crisis last year.
Caught off guard, he initially denied some of the allegations being made
against the company, which later proved to be true. He then set about
apologising in a manner that any PR professional could have told him was not
the way to go. It was drip feed admissions and never a rip the band off
approach.
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Digital access divide grows in disadvantaged communities
By Emily
Baker
August 12, 2019
The internet at Wally Douglass's house is slow.
Key points
- There are 28 suburbs and towns in Tasmania where more than 20 per cent of homes do not have internet access
- Welfare groups say the internet is an now essential service, because an increasing number of government services are going online
- The State Government promised a digital inclusion strategy last year, but it is yet to be released
He
uses communal computers at places such as the Bridgewater Community Centre to
report his income to Centrelink and apply for jobs — things he used to be able
to do using pen and paper.
Mr
Douglass said he considered himself lucky because he had a car to drive to
places like the neighbourhood house from his Pontville home 12 kilometres away,
instead of having to use public transport.
But
he will soon disconnect his home internet and sell his vehicle because a
$20-a-week rent increase has stretched his tight budget even further.
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Sunday, 11 August 2019 13:19
Huawei sounds warning to US and Google with launch of open source HarmonyOS
Huawei
Technologies would prefer to keep using Android in its smartphones but with the
launch yesterday of HarmonyOS its own open source cross platform operating
system, the Chinese telecoms giant has signalled that it is not prepared to
take US sanctions against the company lying down.
That
is the message delivered by Richard Yu, CEO of Huawei consumer division to a
packed Huawei Developer Conference 2019 in Dongguan on Friday.
“If
we cannot use Android in the future we can immediately switch to HarmonyOS,” Yu
told the audience at the conference.
Known
in China as Hongmeng, HarmonyOS is not only open source - a point reportedly
enthusiastically received by the audience - but has been developed to be cross
platform to include PCs, tablets, IoT edge devices.
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Comments more than welcome!
David.
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