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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 were dated 6 December, 2018 and we have seen none since! Its pretty sad!
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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Why the world is under cyber-attack
Malicious attacks by state-sponsored hackers and criminals have flourished during the pandemic. Is this the next global crisis?
By Nicole Perlroth
March 19, 2021
For the past year, I have been sheltering from the pandemic in a cabin in the woods in California, watching as the US death toll climbed higher than in any other country. Witnessing this has been equal parts tragic and maddening, but I know there is a quieter layer to the terror, also invisible but no less life-threatening, palpable only when it hits our hospitals, our bank accounts, our water, our bodies.
I have spent the past seven years infiltrating the world of cyberwarfare, tracking an escalating series of hacks on healthcare services, the power grid, nuclear plants, our privacy, our psyche, with no end in sight. But this year, one in which we virtualised our lives at a scope and speed the world has never seen, I have caught a harrowing glimpse of another plague, one for which there is no vaccination, and one that promises to consume us all if we do not alter our course.
Among the stories to have emerged during the coronavirus pandemic are two cyber-attacks that bookended it. Last April, weeks into its stay-at-home order, Israel announced that Iranian hackers had infiltrated two Israeli water treatment facilities in an attack that officials said was designed to cut off water supplies or contaminate the drinking water for thousands of people quarantined at home. Nearly one year later, the US reported an eerily similar cyber-attack on a water treatment facility in a small town in Florida that increased the amount of the caustic substance lye in the water from 100 parts per million to 11,000 parts per million. Had an engineer not noticed a phantom hand moving his cursor across his screen, the attack might have poisoned thousands of residents, sending them to hospitals already under siege from Covid-19.
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https://digitalhealth.org.au/blog/short-course-in-health-informatics-at-flinders/
Short course in health informatics at Flinders
Mar 19, 2021 | CHIA, Events, State branch
The 2021 Health Informatics Short Course at Flinders University has been rescheduled and is being conducted from 12-16 July in Adelaide (at the Victoria Square Campus).
In this one-week intensive course, you will develop skills in using health informatics to solve real-world issues in health and aged care, management and for clinical decisions.
You will also learn how to make operational and strategic management decisions in relation to health informatics.
As this short course is a post-graduate Topic delivered within the Health Care Management Graduate Certificate > Graduate Diploma > Master of Health Administration program, it is expected that you would have completed undergraduate studies and have two years professional experience in health, aged care or related sectors.
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https://digitalhealth.org.au/blog/executives-into-fellowship/
Executives into fellowship
Mar 19, 2021 | AIDH news
Health managers and leaders are invited to apply for Fellowship or Associate Fellowship of the Institute through the new executive pathway.
Senior executives with depth of knowledge in digital health from their experience across the health system could be eligible for Fellowship and automatic membership of the Institute’s Digital Health Executive Network (DHEN).
DHEN Chair Richard Royle said: “There is a growing global interest from health executives taking the lead on digital in their organisations. Digital health executives and leaders are set to continue to be at the forefront of guiding the health sector through transformation and change.”
Test your eligibility and find out more
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ANAO finds two government departments inaccurately self-reported cyber compliance
The Audit Office report shows the Attorney-General's Department and Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet did not accurately self-report full implementation of one or more Top Four mitigation strategies.
By Asha Barbaschow | March 19, 2021 -- 05:53 GMT (16:53 AEDT) | Topic: Security
The Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) has published its findings of an investigation into the effectiveness of cybersecurity risk mitigation strategies implemented by seven government entities, declaring none have fully implemented all the mandatory benchmarks.
The Attorney-General's Department (AGD); Australian Trade and Investment Commission (Austrade); Department of Education, Skills, and Employment; Future Fund Management Agency; Department of Health; IP Australia; and Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (PM&C) were all under the microscope.
The Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) and Department of Home Affairs (DHA) were also probed by ANAO, but they were not included in this assessment. Instead, they were examined only in their roles as cyber policy and operational entities.
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House passes Online Safety Act as Senate opposes 'big tech' influence committee
Labor supports passage on the understanding government amendments will be forthcoming.
By Asha Barbaschow | March 16, 2021 -- 23:22 GMT (10:22 AEDT) | Topic: Security
The Australian House of Representatives has agreed to the country's new Online Safety Act that would hand the eSafety Commissioner powers to order the removal of material that seriously harms adults and hold platforms accountable to a set of yet to be determined basic online safety expectations.
During a debate on the Bill on Tuesday, the federal opposition agreed with testimony from tech companies and civil liberties groups that the legislation was "rushed".
"We are concerned about a number of aspects of these Bills … firstly, there is the government's delay and mismanagement of the process of getting a Bill for a new Online Safety Act before the Parliament here today, which has substantive consequences," Shadow Assistant Minister for Cyber Security Tim Watts said.
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Amazon claims Australian trademarks for ‘instant access’ doctor business
By Emma Koehn
March 19, 2021 — 11.05am
Amazon has registered Australian trademarks for the on-demand healthcare service it plans to launch across the US this year, as the retail behemoth looks to expand its reach to the booming telehealth sector.
The trillion-dollar retail giant has announced this week that it will launch Amazon Care, an employee-focused healthcare services, to companies across the United States from the middle of this year. The platform, which began as a pilot offer for Amazon employees, connects workers with doctors via phone or internet chat, as well as providing at-home care.
“Amazon Care gives instant access to a range of urgent and primary care services, including COVID-19 and flu testing, vaccinations, treatment of illnesses and injuries, preventive care, sexual health, prescription requests, refills, and delivery, and much more,” the company explained in a blog post this week.
While the launch will be confined to the United States, IP Australia records show the e-commerce giant has also registered the trademark for the words and logo of ‘Amazon Care’ locally.
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Some alarm bells in the COVID vaccination rollout: it shouldn’t be this hard to book an appointment
By Holly Seale
March 19, 2021 — 12.00am
Among friends and family it is well known that I do not cook. Or, on the odd occasion I do, I stick strictly to the recipe. Recipes are like scientific formulas. They keep the equilibrium (aka balance), whether in the pot or the test tube.
Tried and somewhat tested formulas are being used with the delivery of the COVID-19 vaccination program in Australia. Come Monday, we are moving into the next stage of the phased program and encouraging adults aged 70 and over, as well as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders over 55, and adults with specific medical conditions to get vaccinated. We are also extending the program to more health and critical workers.
This next stage of the rollout sees a shift back to primary care, via general practice, being the central pillar of delivery. About 6 million adults are included in this 1B phase.
The challenge is that this phase includes a focus on a broader spectrum of adults, some of whom may not normally attend a general practice to receive vaccines. Instead, they may use the workplace or pharmacy-based programs, or they may not be routinely immunised. This means not all community members are versed in how to access immunisation programs.
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How to use the My Health Record service to keep all your health information together in one convenient place.
About this Event ADHA Propaganda
My Health Record
How to use myGov and the My Health Record service to keep all your health information together in one convenient place.
Gympie Library – Thursday 22 April 10-11am
Under COVID-19 Stage 6 Restrictions we are required to:
• keep contact information about all participants, families and staff who attend an event.
• limit numbers of people attending an event
• maintain 1.5 metre social distancing
NOTE: do not attend if you have returned from overseas or a COVID-19 Hotspot in the last 14 days, have cold or flu like symptoms or have been in contact with a confirmed case of COVID-19 in the last 14 days.
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https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-03-17/covid19-vaccine-book-gp-doctor-australia/13255390
Looking to book a COVID-19 vaccine jab with your GP in Australia? This is how you do it
By medical reporter Sophie Scott and the Specialist Reporting team's Mary Lloyd
Posted Yesterday at 18 March, 2021
From next week, GP clinics across Australia will be offering the COVID-19 vaccine to Australians aged over 70, as well as critical and high-risk workers such as those in defence, police, fire, emergency services and meat processing.
Adults with disabilities and some medical conditions are also in this group.
So if it is your turn, how will it work?
How to find a clinic
First, you need to find a clinic offering COVID-19 vaccinations.
Not all GPs will be giving the jab, but you can check here — once you have clicked through the prompts — to find an eligible GP near you.
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Rupert Murdoch’s Big Tech deals lead to more questions
By Ben Woods and Matthew Field
March 17, 2021 — 11.15am
The chief executive of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp is a man transformed. After cash-for-journalism deals with Google and Facebook, Robert Thomson’s accusations of “smugness” from Big Tech have made way for compliments.
Thomson lauded Google boss Sundar Pichai for his “thoughtful commitment to journalism” following an agreement with News Corp last month.
Praise was also saved for Mark Zuckerberg on Monday when Thomson credited the Facebook chief for “helping fashion the future of journalism” through a pay deal in Australia. The latest agreement with Facebook may have cooled tensions between Murdoch’s media dynasty and Silicon Valley in their long-running battle for influence and power - but questions remain.
It is unclear as to whether these deals can lay the foundations for an everlasting accord that benefits all news publishers, or whether such agreements will wither with time.
The 60-year-old boss of News Corp, which owns News UK, the publisher of The Times and Sun, believes the dial has shifted. Thomson told last month’s Morgan Stanley TMT Conference that “the terms of trade for content are changing fundamentally”.
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Tuesday, 16 March 2021 09:30
News Corporation strikes three-year Facebook deal in Australia
News Corporation has announced it has reached a multi-year agreement with Facebook, to provide news to users of the social media site Down Under.
In a statement issued from the headquarters of its American division, the company said the deal would cover News Corporation Australia. A report in a Nine newspaper says Nine Entertainment has signed a letter of intent with Facebook, but no details of any deal have been provided.
Included in the deal are The Australian, news.com.au, The Daily Telegraph, the Herald Sun and The Courier-Mail, plus regional and community publications.
The company added that Sky News Australia had also reached a new agreement with Facebook, building on an existing agreement.
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https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=737c1845-a0d1-4ccb-ab29-ace903b2ab04
A ‘new normal’ when it comes to the TGA regulation of medical devices?
Herbert Smith Freehills LLP Emma Iles and Helen Cousins
Key points:
- In Australia responding to the urgent need for COVID-related medical devices the TGA implemented a number of emergency measures to bring medical devices to market faster.
- The emergency regulatory measures have proven agile, flexible and successful with the potential risks to the public well managed.
- The regulatory measures have potential utility beyond the pandemic – and could be harnessed to get fast moving medical device technology to market more quickly.
Introduction
The COVID-19 public health emergency has mobilised the pharmaceutical and medical devices industries like never before. The TGA in particular has played a pivotal role in Australia’s response to the pandemic; including implementing a number of emergency measures to accelerate the registration of medical devices or to exempt them from registration in certain circumstances.
Almost a year on, some of the emergency regulatory measures are being rolled back. The TGA has identified that it will, as a priority, ‘respond proactively to emerging public health issues’1 and it is seemingly now well prepared for future public health emergencies. But do some of these emergency regulatory measures potentially have broader application beyond public health emergencies? Specifically, rather than rolling back all of these measures, could some remain and have broader applicability to address the rapid rate of innovation in technology to get fast moving medical device technology to market more quickly? Once the fires of COVID-19 are extinguished, and planned regulatory regime changes that were delayed because of the pandemic take effect, this would be worthy of consideration.
Medical devices and the TGA
Broadly, a ‘medical device’ is any product, equipment or software that has a physical or mechanical effect on the human body or is used to measure or monitor the human body and its functions.2 Unless a valid exemption applies, medical devices must be included in the ARTG, the reference database of the TGA, in order to be imported, supplied in, or exported from Australia. Ventilators, IVDs used for COVID-19 diagnosis, thermometers and any PPE presented or claiming to be for therapeutic use, such as masks intended to reduce or prevent the transmission of disease, are considered ‘medical devices’.
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Data ‘the new oil’ but privacy crucial, says Optus CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin
· David Swan
Customer data is “the new oil” but needs to be treated with safety and respect for privacy, according to Optus chief executive Kelly Bayer Rosmarin, who has warned of the “creepy” side-effects for consumers if their intimate information isn’t handled with care.
Speaking at the Melbourne Business Analytics Conference via video link, Ms Bayer Rosmarin said tech giants were getting increasingly adept at hoovering up user data, making it equally important that those companies were ethical in their privacy and security practices.
“Companies that trade in data — the oil of the digital era — are the ones that capture our attention, imagination and dollars,” she told attendees. “There’s Uber, which knows where we go and what we eat. Facebook knows who we know and what we share with them. The mammoth Amazon knows what we buy.
“And perhaps most impressive of all, Google knows our intentions as we use the behemoth’s search engine to research our next holiday, car or baby name.
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Self-cloning robots on the march to help save humanity
By Ellie Zolfagharifard
March 16, 2021 — 5.00am
London: Hidden deep in robotics labs around the world, a new generation of intelligent machines is learning to breed and evolve.
Just like humans, these robots are able to “give birth” to new versions of themselves, with each one better than the last. They are precise, efficient and creative - and scientists say they could some day help save humanity.
Deep in labs around the world, a new generation of intelligent machines is learning to breed and evolve so as to explore distant planets and perhaps help save humanity.Credit:iStock
It might sound like something from a sci-fi novel, but robot evolution is an area that has been explored in earnest ever since mathematician John von Neumann showed how a machine could replicate itself in 1949.
Researchers at the universities of York, Edinburgh Napier and the West of England, as well as Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, have spent the past four years, and almost £2 million of government funds, working on the first fully autonomous system to design and build robot colonies.
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News Corp Australia, Nine strike Facebook content deals
By Zoe Samios
Updated March 16, 2021 — 9.43amfirst published at 8.24am
Social media giant Facebook has struck content deals with Australia’s two largest media companies - Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp and Nine Entertainment Co - in a major breakthrough after weeks of tense negotiations following the introduction of media bargaining laws.
News Corp Australia announced on Tuesday it had signed a multimillion-dollar deal with Facebook for use of news articles from publications such as The Australian, The Daily Telegraph and the Herald Sun and videos from Sky News Australia.
Nine Entertainment Co, the owner of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, has also signed a letter of intent with the tech giant for use of its news articles, according to industry sources who could not speak publicly because the negotiations are confidential.
The agreements follow months of difficult negotiations between media companies and the $US780 billion (AU$1 trillion) social media giant and were struck after it changed previously non-negotiable “poison pill” clauses in contracts that would allow the tech giant to walk away if it was required to comply with the media bargaining laws.
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https://medicalrepublic.com.au/tga-software-crackdown/41788
15 March 2021
TGA software crackdown
podcast Technology TGA The Tea Room
The Therapeutic Goods Administration recently announced changes to the regulation of ‘software as a medical device.’
The changes apply to software which has a purpose consistent with the definition of a medical device such as diagnosis, prevention, monitoring, prediction, prognosis or the treatment of a disease or disability.
And since the end of February, any products not listed on the Australian Registry for Therapeutic Goods (ARTG) have been prevented from being sold in Australia.
This new guidance clarifies the regulatory landscape for software based digital health products, and will work to distinguish certain products that are considered low risk, from ones that are subject to additional oversight.
You can also listen and subscribe to the show by searching for “The Tea Room Medical Republic” in your favourite podcast player.
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https://www.itnews.com.au/news/online-safety-laws-get-senate-committee-green-light-562103
Online safety laws get senate committee green light
By Justin Hendry on Mar 15, 2021 6:43AM
No major changes recommended.
A senate committee has given the government’s controversial online safety laws the green light, with the bill now expected to be debated in federal parliament as early as Tuesday this week.
The government-led Environment and Communications Legislation Committee handed down its report [pdf] on Friday, recommending that the Online Safety Bill 2021 pass without major changes.
The legislation would establish a cyber abuse takedown scheme for adults, requiring social media services, designated internet services and hosting services to remove material within 24 hours.
It would also give the eSafety Commissioner the power to require ISPs to block access to domain names, URLs or IP addresses containing abhorrent violent material, formalising an existing regime.
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Comments more than welcome!
David.
re How to use the My Health Record service to keep all your health information together in one convenient place.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/my-health-record-gympie-library-tickets-146700754907?aff=ebdssbdestsearch
Talk about fake news, It's not just propaganda it's a blatant misrepresentation of the truth. Even if you wanted to and tried your hardest, there is no way you can do it. Not "all your health information".
And the page you register on has the Australian Government logo.