I Am Not Sure I Am Comfortable With (Private) Public Health Networks Holding All This Data.

I noticed this during last week.

Data hosting

17 June 2021

Primary Health Insights, the health data storage and analytics platform initiated and built by PHNs, is now operational.

The roll out of the data onboarding process and governance audits has been completed and most of the 27 participating PHNs are now storing de-identified patient data, sourced from general practices, in their secure lockboxes.

Lead by WAPHA, his has been the largest and most complex national project undertaken by PHNs, and the first at this scale by PHNs operating as a collective.

Ultimately, Primary Health Insights will allow PHNs to analyse the de-identified data collected and provide new insights to general practices.  This will enable practices to deliver better patient care and lead to improved health outcomes by supporting data driven continuous improvement.

Primary Health Insights is a highly secure environment that has passed independent cybersecurity tests against industry and government benchmarks. It has also undergone, and will continue to undergo, stringent privacy impact assessments, as part of the operational processes and governance framework of the platform.

Built using Microsoft Azure cloud technology, each participating PHN has its own independent, secure “lock-box” for the hosting of their data, with complete control over its access and use.

Alongside the transition from project to operational mode, WA Primary Health Alliance is now focussed on the development of the platform’s analytics and reporting capabilities.

Historical data

In late August 2020, the project transitioned from a platform development phase to a pilot phase. WA Primary Health Alliance established its own secure “lock-box” on the Primary Health Insights platform, tested the platform’s capability and migrated its own data into this environment. This included data that was routinely collected from WA general practices and previously stored by Curtin University on behalf of the WA Primary Health Alliance. This data has been erased from the University’s servers to the full extent that is technically practicable.

Here is the link:

https://www.wapha.org.au/health-professionals/general-practice-support/data-hosting/

First we need to realise the PHNs are relatively small incorporated organisation that are mostly government funded with varying levels of technical skills in data protection and security

Second we know that, thank to Vanessa Teague and he colleagues that de-identified data isn’t!

Third having all this data with one provider is hardly confidence building!

Fourth I am totally unclear that the average patient has any idea their data is collected and stored in this fashion. You can read commentary on that in this context here:

May 21, 2021 by Juanita Fernando

Commonwealth Health Department going for data grab under cover of COVID

While Australia is focussed on COVID, the government acts to quietly collect our personal health data.

The Department of Health funded project, Primary Health Insights, has been uploading detailed health records from GP databases.

Industry sources have revealed that up to 25 million individual health records have been uploaded to “the Cloud”.

400 items of medical data per patient include medications and prescribing dates, including opioids, antidepressants, antipsychotics, MBS items, allergies, alcohol consumption, diagnoses, pathology dates and results, including STIs, chlamydia, gonorrhoea, syphilis, hepatitis, HIV, HPV and pap smear information.

While almost 10% of Australians opted out of My Health Record, most may be unaware they are giving consent to their default data upload, when they sign the patient registration form to see their own doctor.

Lots more here:

https://privacy.org.au/2021/05/21/commonwealth-health-department-going-for-data-grab-under-cover-of-covid/

All in all this has way too much of ‘Big Brother’ about it! Who knows how to opt-out?

David.