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This weekly blog is to explore the news around the larger issues around Digital Health, data security, data privacy, AI / ML. technology, social media 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 still dated 6 December, 2018! How pathetic is that for transparency? Secrecy unconstrained!
Note: Appearance here is not to suggest I see any credibility or value in what follows. I will leave it to the reader to decide what is worthwhile and what is not! The point is to let people know what is being said / published that I have come upon.
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A resilient nation demands a cyber-smart approach
While we cannot understate the pandemic’s financial and social impacts, COVID-19 has opened our eyes to the need for Australia to increase its cyber security capability and enhance supply chain sovereignty.
No one is suggesting Australia decouple from global trade but we must question if we have gone too far. That is truest in cyber security, where our reliance on foreign firms has reached concerning levels. Australians in need are joining global queues and are overly dependent on offshore assistance when something goes wrong. We must invest in the local cyber industry, infrastructure and skills.
Cyber security underpins our economic and national resilience. After devastating bushfires and a global health crisis, a cyber attack may well be the next national security event. To ensure Australia can deal with a significant incident, we need a comprehensive cyber industry plan. It must include four elements. Industry and government need to better define their respective roles in managing and responding to cyber risk; improve the security of critical supply chains; boost the cyber skills pipeline; and co-design cyber security regulations.
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http://www.healthintersections.com.au/?p=3037
#FHIR DevDays: Collaboration in the time of the virus
Posted on June 4, 2020 by Grahame Grieve
The Covid-19 pandemic has brought sweeping changes to our lives. I’m pretty sure that everyone in the world has been affected now. All the changes relate to our ability to meet together – to work, eat, play, and love, and these changes are gradually impacting the quality of lives more and more – or just killing us. I’m particularly concerned that the impact on our lives and the economy is exponential, just like the virus directly. Over time, the gradual degrading of our interactions starts to create network effects, and these are gradually building now. It seems that we are already seeing second order effects.
The FHIR community is not immune to all this; the pandemic means that we’ve had to suspend our regular meeting cycles, and it seems like it will be at least the rest of the year, or even longer, before we can plan to meet face to face again (and even longer for international travel). While the FHIR community has always made heavy use of virtual communication tools – particularly weekly teleconferences that are starting to be videoconferences, and heavy use of chat.fhir.org – these have been built on the fellowship we establish by meeting and eating (and drinking) together in person on a regular basis. And also working together late into the nights in uncomfortable hotel rooms and bars. We can’t do that now – and we fear that this will gradually erode our ability to collaborate.
Instead, we have to build new ways to engage, to leverage virtual meetings as much as we can. A few weeks ago we had our first fully virtual FHIR Connectathon, which was a rousing success, though we learnt plenty that will mean the next one (in September) will be even better. But now our attention turns to FHIR DevDays Virtual Edition, from June 15-18. I’m really looking forward to what is now the main bi-yearly gathering of FHIR implementers.
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Home Affairs considers expanding the list of agencies who can access metadata
The Department of Home Affairs has been working to broaden the definition of enforcement agencies under the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act.
By Asha Barbaschow | June 4, 2020 -- 01:59 GMT (11:59 AEST) | Topic: Security
The Department of Home Affairs has been working to broaden the list of agencies who can access metadata under the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979.
An undated letter penned by Minister for Home Affairs Peter Dutton, received under the Freedom of Information Act by CommsDay, said the department was working with state and territory agencies who have asked to be added as "enforcement agencies" by legislative amendment.
The letter also said the department was, in the meantime, working to "explore the feasibility and suitability of a temporary declaration".
The comments were made in response to a request from Tasmanian Attorney-General Elise Archer on 29 July 2019 asking for state and territory Australian Consumer Law (ACL) regulators to be declared as enforcement agencies under the Act, allowing them access to telecommunications data as per the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Amendment (Data Retention) Act 2015.
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Jun 17
Electronic Transfer of Prescriptions using Medical Director
by WentWest Ltd ADHA Propaganda
Free
General Practitioners, Nurses, Practice Staff and Practice Managers within the Western Sydney Primary Health Network Region can attend.
About this Event
Guest Speaker:
Katrina Otto - Managing Director, Train IT Medical Pty Ltd
General practitioners, nurses, practice managers and practice staff are invited to attend Electronic Transfer of Prescriptions using Medical Director (including My Health Record).
What you will learn:
- Learn about current changes in the prescribing process in Medical Director
- Discuss the use of the token model for ePrescriptions and patient impact of changes to electronic prescribing
- Explore ideas for improved use of My Health Record for medication management.
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Opinion: systems modelling can save us from delayed actions and wrong turns in policymaking
By Jo-An Atkinson & Ian B. Hickie & Kenny Lawson
Thursday June 4, 2020
Cast your mind back to the once ubiquitous paper-based roadmaps (‘Refidex’; “Gregorys or Melways). Every car had one. A book of several hundred maps that represented the only way to figure out how to get from A to B, and a source of inordinate amounts of frustration, particularly if you were trying to get somewhere quickly. As the map on one page ended, you were prompted to go to page 53 to continue following a particular road, then back to page 25, then on to page 32, only to find that the road your finger was following across these pieces of the map wasn’t going to take you where you needed to go! Thank goodness for the rise of the digital street map and satellite navigation systems that now harness continuous streams of data to calculate and re-assess in real time the most efficient routes to your destination, without having to resort to the vagaries of our cognitive capacities.
The engineering, business, and finance sectors know only too well the value of advanced computing and how to harness it to get efficiently to their destination. When product viability and profits are at stake, complexity and uncertainty need to be managed, and outcomes optimised. It goes without saying that business performance is significantly enhanced by being able to weigh up the different route options and successfully navigate potential roadblocks. Complex systems modelling and simulation is in essence the satellite navigation system of these sectors.
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ACCC watching US class action over ‘secret’ tracking by Google
Australia's consumer watchdog says it's closely watching a $US5 billion class action suit in the US involving Google, which allegedly invaded the privacy of millions of users by tracking their internet even though their browsers were set to “private” mode.
A complaint filed in the federal court in California this week alleges the tech giant tracks users and hoovers up their data through Google Analytics, Google Ad Manager and other applications and website plug-ins, despite the user being in “incognito” mode.
That data helps Google learn about users’ friends, hobbies, favourite foods, shopping habits, and even the “most intimate and potentially embarrassing things” they search for online, the complaint said.
Google “cannot continue to engage in the covert and unauthorised data collection from virtually every American with a computer or phone,” the complaint said.
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Remote medical monitoring system to help rural patients goes live
By Stuart Layt
June 5, 2020 — 12.06pm
Mary Gaston has lived in the same small town for almost 50 years and has no intention to leave – it is hoped a new method of remote medicine will make sure she never has to.
The 78-year-old has lived in the NSW town of Yetman, near the Queensland border, since she and her husband Tod moved there 45 years ago.
Mary Gaston is hoping new remote monitoring devices being used by the University of New England can help her stay in her small town of Yetman.
Tod died last year after having heart and lung issues for a number of years, and had to travel three hours to see specialists in Toowoomba on a regular basis leading up to his death.
Mrs Gaston, who herself has type 2 diabetes and has to travel to the town of Texas to see a GP, said having to travel for basic healthcare was a burden being borne by many people living in rural parts of the country.
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Facebook may tweak policy, as Mark Zuckerberg defends handling of Donald Trump posts
Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg, addressing employees in a highly charged town-hall meeting, defended his decision to preserve a controversial post from President Trump but said he was open to some tweaks in how the company deals with such content.
Mr Zuckerberg spoke amid mounting outrage from insiders and civil-rights activists that the message -- in which Mr Trump called protesters thugs and warned: “When the looting starts, the shooting starts” -- was tantamount to a call for violence, and therefore a violation of Facebook’s rules. Facebook took no action on the post, while Twitter shielded the same message from public view along with a label saying it glorified violence.
Mr Zuckerberg disagreed that Mr Trump’s post broke Facebook’s rules, but he said he would dispatch teams to study other options for handling objectionable posts beyond taking them down or leaving them up, according to a person who attended the meeting. Mr Zuckerberg said he would personally review the options submitted by the teams.
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Cyber security needs to be on the agenda of all our company boards
In 2012, then FBI director Robert Mueller said: “There are only two types of companies: those who have been hacked and those that will be.” Since then, data breaches, hacks and ransomware attacks have happened every day across the world. They should all serve as a reminder to ensure that systems are patched, appropriate controls are in place and that humans understand they play a vital role in stopping breaches and protecting valuable data and systems.
And the simple fact is that if you are a global business, a small business, or an individual running systems connected to the internet, then you are at risk.
The reality of cyber breaches is blunt and surprisingly simple. Ultimately, in most cases, it comes down to the number one — that is, the number of people a hacker needs to trick to gain access to data.
So, when teamed together, cyber security system weakness such as an unpatched system and human fallibility make easy prey for cyber criminals. More often than not, it is as simple as a link that has been clicked, allowing access to a system. The amount of disruption and damage depends on the intentions of the cyber criminal, the type of organisation that was attacked, global spread and how quickly the intrusion is detected.
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Jun 10
ePrescribing, Results and My Health Record for multidisciplinary care
by WentWest Ltd ADHA Propaganda
General Practitioners, Nurses, Practice Staff and Practice Managers within the Western Sydney Primary Health Network Region can attend.
About this Event
Guest Speaker:
Katrina Otto - Managing Director, Train IT Medical Pty Ltd
General practitioners, nurses, practice managers and practice staff are invited to attend ePrescribing, Results and My Health Record for multidisciplinary care.
What you will learn:
- Discuss new arrangements for electronic prescriptions
- Prepare for changes to electronic prescribing in Australia
- Develop a plan to educate patients about electronic prescriptions
- Use My Health Record and Secure Messaging to improve clinical safety, communication and co-ordination of patient care in a multi-disciplinary team.
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https://www.afr.com/technology/covidsafe-app-designed-for-the-wrong-pandemic-20200603-p54z2m
COVIDSafe app designed for the wrong pandemic
John Davidson Columnist
Jun 3, 2020 – 3.27pm
The federal government's COVIDSafe pandemic tracing app was based on out-of-date assumptions and needs to be overhauled, a study by a team of data analysts, economists and policy design experts has found.
The app, which the federal government has been encouraging everyone to install on their phones to help prevent a second wave of COVID-19 cases, detects when an individual has come in close contact with someone infected by COVID-19, and passes the information on to the health department to help speed up the contact tracing process.
Professor Rhema Vaithianathan says time is of the essence with COVID-19 tracing apps.
While that system might have worked for older infections such as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) that broke out in 2003, it's too slow for COVID-19, the team from the University of Queensland, Auckland University of Technology, The University of Auckland and Massey University of New Zealand concluded in its report.
The app also needed to immediately notify any potential contacts so they could isolate themselves, one of the report's authors, Rhema Vaithianathan, told The Australian Financial Review.
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The control revolution: How big tech is using COVID-19 to push the “warp-speed” button on changing our lives
June 3, 2020
The coronavirus pandemic has sped up changes that were already happening across society, from remote learning and work, to e-health, supply chains and logistics, policing, welfare and beyond.
And big tech companies have not hesitated to make the most of the crisis.
In New York, for example, former Google chief executive Eric Schmidt is leading a panel tasked with transforming the city after the pandemic, with its main priorities being telehealth, remote learning and broadband. Microsoft founder Bill Gates has also been called in to help create “a smarter education system”.
The government, health, education and defence sectors have long been prime targets for digital disruption. American business expert Scott Galloway and others have argued they are irresistible pools of demand for the big tech firms.
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Phishing boom shows no sign of stopping as lockdown starts to lift
By Tim Biggs
June 2, 2020 — 12.00am
Cyber criminals are gearing up to target workers returning to the office, with experts warning that phishing attacks and new scams exploiting the COVID-19 pandemic are continuing to flood the internet.
Phishing attacks, in which hackers impersonate trusted sources to trick people into disclosing sensitive information, are already routinely used to break into systems and have become increasingly sophisticated to dupe people working from home.
Crispin Kerr, manager of the Australian operations of enterprise security company Proofpoint, said that as soon as workers were advised to stay home scammers began impersonating their employers to break into company networks.
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https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/2020/06/03/covid-safe-downloads-coronavirus/
6:00am, Jun 3, 2020
How pivotal has the COVIDSafe app been to Australia’s coronavirus response?
It has been just over a month since the government’s COVIDSafe app was launched.
Since then, it’s been downloaded over six million times and used in at least one successful contact tracing exercise.
Soon after COVIDSafe was made available, the Prime Minister said the app was central to the government’s strategy for reopening the economy.
As states and territories press ahead with their reopening plans, the number of new downloads of COVIDSafe has significantly slowed.
We asked the government, an IT expert and an epidemiologist how central the COVIDSafe app has been to Australia’s coronavirus strategy so far.
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Jun 2, 2020,10:00am EDT
When It Comes To Saving Lives, Cybersecurity Pros Emerge As Influencers
Have you downloaded COVIDSafe yet? Australia’s COVID-19 contact-tracing smartphone app was released April 26. To adequately support public health efforts, the government set a target of 10 million downloads, equal to 40% of the population. A month later, we are still over 4 million people away from that target.
As individuals have debated whether or not to download the contact-tracing app, more and more have been engaging with and listening carefully to security and privacy professionals, including friends and colleagues. Cybersecurity pros are now very clearly influencers, helping society in its quest to save lives.
So how did we get here? Being sought out as a trusted source of advice and guidance outside our own organizations is a far cry from our traditional “department of no” status. Over the past month:
- Individuals have remained cautious and concerned about privacy. This is not at all surprising, since security pros have been educating people on these issues for decades. In Australia, we saw how lack of trust due to prior incidents was used as a reason to not download. Citizens cited the My Health Record debacle, in which over 2 million Australians opted out of having an e-health record, the disjointed response to the census platform crash in 2016, and the government’s blunder mid-pandemic with a backflip on claims that the myGov website crashed as a result of a cyberattack.
- But the security community has responded, led by CISOs and even CEOs. ASX 100 CISOs, service providers, and government cybersecurity advisors have actively, and very publicly, supported the app. Andrew Dell, QBE Insurance’s CISO, outlined his intentions and reasons on LinkedIn, noting that “It is not a tracking app: it’s a contact app and I applaud its construction and the very sensible minimum data set it captures.” Lynwen Connick, the ANZ CISO, stated “I am running the COVIDSafe app — to keep us all safe and return our lives to normal as soon as possible.” And National Australia Bank (NAB) added its support for the app via a media release, with CEO Ross McEwan saying he intends to download the app and will send a note to NAB’s 34,000 employees about its release.
- Other respected security community members have joined in. Well-respected security professional members have blogged and tweeted to clarify some questions, encouraging community support. The Australian Information Security Association, a 6,000-member-strong organization, released a survey to its members and found that 90% of members who responded to the survey (security professionals) have downloaded the app.
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https://ajp.com.au/news/amazon-on-the-move/
Amazon on the move
A Guild leader says the organisation will do “whatever it takes” to defend the current pharmacy model, as Amazon applies for another health trademark
Amazon has reportedly filed an application for the “BasicCare” trademark in Australia, which would apply to a range of over-the-counter medicines it owns.
Currently, Australians can buy other brands of some OTCs from Amazon’s local website.
The application for this trademark was filed just days before the Pharmacy Guild is due to lodge its statement of grounds for its opposition to the “Amazon Pharmacy” trademark, which was applied for earlier this year.
The Guild has until June 4 to lodge its statement of grounds and particulars.
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Tuesday, 02 June 2020 15:27
Government cooperation tackled COVID-19, so why not the digital divide and our leadership in the Fourth Industrial Revolution?
GUEST OPINION by Shannon Fisher, managing director, IPSTAR:
The success of the National Cabinet in coordinating the Commonwealth, States’ and Territories’ response to COVID-19 underlines the historical challenge of operating within a federation but also demonstrates how when Australian governments do work well together, we can be world leaders.
The announcement by Prime Minister Scott Morrison that the National Cabinet will replace the existing COAG framework, is evidence that despite their ideological differences, and differing priorities, the Premiers and Chief Ministers see value in a more cooperative form of federalism during a crisis.
While perhaps not fitting the definition of a crisis, one burning issue that is calling out for better co-ordination and co-operation between Canberra and our second tier of government, is the still gaping digital divide between the city and bush.
That’s not a criticism. It is an observation. And the efforts by all levels of Government to improve access to high-speed Internet, from metropolitan areas to the country’s remotest corners, should be acknowledged.
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Australia’s cybersecurity problem
Corporate Australia and our government departments and agencies are in trouble. Not just because of the social and economic devastation the COVID-19 pandemic has and continues to deliver, but because of their failure to understand that cybersecurity should be a top priority.
Everything we now do is mandated by COVID’s influence – reinforcing the terms and conditions of an invisible enemy.
It has become clear the world is now at COVID’s mercy, and if as a country we refuse to adopt the right strategies to counter the ongoing dangers it continues to pose, our fate remains determined by a virus we are unable to control – cybersecurity through the COVID-19 pandemic, has become the virtual world’s bonanza, where cyber criminals are ramping up their efforts at a rate of an astonishing 1000 to 1 in search for the riches of information and financial gain they seek to prosper from
In the thick haze COVID-19 has cast, cyber criminals are surfing it as a wave of manifested opportunity.
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https://www.ausdoc.com.au/opinion/will-telehealth-make-us-better-diagnosticians
Will telehealth make us better diagnosticians?
Dr Duvefelt, aka 'A Country Doctor', is a family doctor in the US.
2nd June 2020
We have all heard that 90% of the time, a patient’s history provides the diagnosis before we even perform a physical exam or order any tests.
At the same time, much of our reimbursement used to hinge on how many body systems we examined.
Like so many other things in the new reality we find ourselves in, what constitutes a proper medical visit has suddenly changed and will probably continue to evolve.
I suspect, and hope, that the way we have now tried to work will bring a lasting shift in how we view the process, and the art, of medical diagnosis.
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https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=c8fa1c5f-229d-40e5-91b0-930f94e87c9e
Cybercrime: Managing data breaches in Australia
What is a data breach?
A data breach is generally defined as an incident involving “unauthorised access to sensitive, protected or confidential data resulting in the compromise of either confidentiality, integrity or availability of an information asset”.[1] Data breaches pose serious risks to businesses and the individuals to whom the information relates.
One specific type of data breach is a “business email compromise” (BEC), where a cybercriminal impersonates a business contact to trick employees or suppliers of a business to transfer money or to provide sensitive information. Often BEC scammers use domain names or emails almost identical to those of the contact they are impersonating, and because they don’t use malicious attachments, their emails often get past anti-virus software. Most BEC scams take one of these forms:[2]
- Executive fraud: A cybercriminal masquerades as an executive and sends an email to staff requesting they transfer funds to the scammer’s account.
- Legal impersonation: A cybercriminal requests payment for an urgent and sensitive legal matter.
- Invoice fraud: A cybercriminal sends a fake invoice to the business, impersonating a trusted supplier. In many cases, cybercriminals have accessed the supplier’s real email account and have made changes to the bank account details in otherwise legitimate invoices.
- Data theft: This scam involves impersonating a trusted person to request sensitive information. The information obtained is sometimes used in a larger, more complex scam.
This article provides details on what you can do to minimise harm to your business in the event of a data breach, including a BEC. Please note that this article is general in nature and nothing in this article should be taken as legal advice. Should you have any queries in relation to the legal issues raised in this article, please contact us here for further information.
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https://www.afr.com/technology/should-trump-be-censoring-the-internet-20200531-p54y49
Should Trump be censoring the internet?
John Davidson and Natasha Gillezeau
Jun 2, 2020 – 12.01am
Is it possible that Donald Trump is correct?
We're not asking whether he's generally correct, as a rule – Trump's record with fact checkers would seem to put that question to bed – and nor are we asking if he's politically correct, a term that Trump himself wields as an insult.
But is the President of the United States specifically correct when he says that the 26 words that created the internet should be altered, creating a new version of the internet that may or may not (but probably won't) include those internet companies, such as Twitter, that President Trump views as a drag to his re-election chances come November.
The words, found in section section 230 of the US Communications Decency Act (CDA) of 1996, are as follows:
"No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider."
Those 26 words are the modern equivalent of the eight- or 10-word opening to the Pentateuch – In the beginning, God created heaven and earth – and it's no exaggeration to say that social media companies such as Twitter and Facebook would not exist at such scale without them.
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https://www.afr.com/technology/why-home-wi-fi-poses-a-business-risk-20200521-p54v58
Why home Wi-Fi poses a business risk
John Davidson Columnist
Jun 2, 2020 – 12.00am
Home Wi-Fi routers are often "as secure as a cardboard shark cage", and during the COVID pandemic are being exploited to launch attacks on the corporate networks of homeowners' employers, a forum representing Australia's chief information security officers has warned.
Chief information security officers employed by big corporations have noticed their security operations centres are experiencing heightened levels of alerts because they're detecting attacks using their employees' home networks, according to James Turner, whose company, CISO Lens, provides a forum for CISOs in Australia and New Zealand.
With workplaces shut down because of the COVID pandemic, companies have been scrambling to enable their staff to work from home, and have inadvertently been exposing their corporate networks to the vulnerabilities found in home Wi-Fi routers, which may never have been secure or which may now be so old that any security is long since out of date.
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Inside Twitter’s decision to take action on Trump’s tweets
The battle between US President Donald Trump and Twitter has escalated after the President signed an executive order aimed at regulating social media companies. Twitter has ...
· Dow Jones
When Twitter Inc. earlier this month announced a new fact-checking tool, it was billed largely as a measure to combat false information about coronavirus. Two weeks later, the company deployed that tool in one of the biggest actions in its history: squaring off with President Trump.
Since Tuesday, the platform has taken several actions on messages from Mr. Trump as well as a post from the official White House account, marking some as breaking the company’s rules and adding a fact-check label to two about mail-in ballots. In response, Mr. Trump issued an executive order taking aim at what he said was censorship by social-media companies, and threatened to dismantle Twitter’s business if it didn’t stop tagging his posts.
The moves marked a sharp reversal for Twitter, which for years has faced criticism from users for what they see as inaction and inconsistency in policing its own platform, and turmoil among its employees over how it has managed its most prominent user. Some of Twitter’s 4,000 employees have accused the company and Chief Executive Jack Dorsey of ignoring harmful behaviour from the accounts of powerful figures, while others have said moderating those accounts would be akin to censorship.
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Media companies lose appeal over Facebook defamation ruling
June 1, 2020 — 9.57am
NSW's top court has upheld a controversial decision holding media companies legally responsible for the allegedly defamatory comments of readers on their public Facebook pages, in a ruling with implications for other organisations with public social media accounts.
Former Northern Territory youth detainee Dylan Voller launched defamation proceedings against three media outlets in 2017 over a series of claims made about him in the comments section of Facebook posts on the pages of The Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian, the Centralian Advocate, Sky News Australia and The Bolt Report.
In a preliminary decision in June last year, NSW Supreme Court Justice Stephen Rothman found the companies had "published" the third party comments and accordingly were legally responsible for them. The decision was widely considered to be out of step with the law in other Western countries.
The media outlets, including the Herald, lodged an appeal in the NSW Court of Appeal. The court dismissed the appeal on Monday.
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https://ajp.com.au/columns/business-class/getting-e-prescription-prepared/
Getting e-prescription prepared
COVID-19 has fast-tracked the introduction of e-prescribing. So how do you get your pharmacy e-prepared? asks Ben Wilkins
How you deliver care to your patients is an area that is changing faster than ever before – driven in part by Covid-19, but mainly by technology?
The launch of electronic prescriptions has been brought forward in response to Covid-19 and the Department of Health has put measures in place with fast-track electronic prescriptions to support vendors being ready be 31st May.
Regardless of the date of implementation, when a patient presents with a token electronic prescription, pharmacies need to be ready to accept and dispense Electronic Prescriptions in order to dispense .
If electronic prescriptions, NASH PKI, HPOS, IHI, HPI-O and HPI-I are not making complete sense to you – you are not alone. To take your business and service offer to the next level, pharmacists will need to understand the digital language and the technology landscape that is fast emerging.
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Comments more than welcome!
David.
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