This appeared a bit over six years ago!
Hidden conflict: My Health Record boss privately giving advice to health firms
By Esther Han
November 15, 2018 — 12.00am
The chairman of the agency responsible for the bungled My Health Record rollout has been privately advising a global healthcare outsourcing company.
The Herald discovered the relationship between the UK based government contracting giant Serco and the Australian Digital Health Agency (ADHA) chairman Jim Birch after obtaining internal documents that detail the board members' conflicts of interest.
The revelation comes as federal Health Minister Greg Hunt was forced to extend the My Health Record opt out period after a compromise deal with the Senate crossbench and a last minute meltdown of the website left thousands of Australians struggling to meet the original deadline.
Since April 2016, Mr Birch has been ADHA chairman with oversight of the My Health Record system, which will automatically generate digital medical records for millions of Australians who do not opt out by the end of January.
The ADHA board's "Personal Interests Disclosures Register", released under Freedom of Information laws, shows Mr Birch began "providing strategy advice to Serco" in November 2017. The register is not publicly available.
After the Herald submitted questions last week on whether the relationship posed a conflict of interest, Mr Birch quit the Serco advisory role.
Serco has won a number of multi-billion dollar government contracts to privately run - and in some cases deliver healthcare in - some of Australia's prisons, hospitals and detention centres.
The ability of Serco to navigate the controversial area of digital health records would be invaluable to any future expansion plans, given its "global healthcare strategy".
A spokeswoman for Mr Hunt said all 10 board members had declared their interests.
"Board members do not have access to system operations and board members cannot be present while a matter is being considered at a board meeting in which the member has an interest," she said.
Lisa Parker, a public health ethics expert at University of Sydney, said the public had been asked to trust that the agency is acting in its best interests. She said it should make public any information relevant to that trust.
The original My Health Record opt out deadline was October 15, 2018.Credit: Alamy
"Some members of the public may select not to place their trust in board members who they perceive to have conflicts of interest," Dr Parker said.
"This does not mean that transparency is wrong, rather it means that allowing associations that give rise to real or perceived conflicts of interest threatens the viability of the potentially important resource that is the My Health Record."
More competing interests exposed
The register also shows Mr Birch knows the chief executive of health-tech startup Personify Care, Ken Saman, and has been giving him advice since August last year.
The software company recently released "Personify Connect", a product that provides hospitals with "seamless integration" of its original patient monitoring platform with My Health Record.
Despite being scheduled to speak at a "Personify Care breakfast seminar" later this year, Mr Birch has never publicly declared this potential competing interest.
Mr Birch is also chairman of another startup called Clevertar that allows businesses to create "virtual agents" and offer "personalised healthcare support, delivered at scale". This relationship is on the public record.
Public sector ethics expert Richard Mulgan, from Australian National University, said the chairman should submit to a higher standard than ordinary board members and distance himself from anything suggesting a conflict of interest.
He said perception was just as important as reality and the public, not the people involved, was the best judge of whether there was a problem.
November 15th is the opt-out date for My Health Record, but exactly what does this data system mean for Australians?
"The personal interests register must be published," Professor Mulgan said. "The fact they haven't can only lead to the perception there are conflicts of which they are ashamed."
Mr Birch, Personify Care and Clevertar did not respond to the Herald's questions.
A Serco spokesman confirmed the company met with Mr Birch "occasionally ... over the past 12 months regarding business management", but did not answer whether it had paid him.
An ADHA spokesman said under laws, "no board member alone has the ability to make a decision in board meetings or for decisions made without meetings".
In regards to Serco, it said it "has no commercial relationship with Serco and the company does not and has not had access to the My Health Record system".
Here is the link:
The mess that is the myHR has been rolling on for a very long time now. Are there any recent reports that it is now just wonderful and widely used all over?
I have not heard any such reports!
I wonder what Mr Jim Birch thinks about the myHR all these years later?
David.
The system has never got off the ground. It was doomed the day Kevin Rudd was stabbed by Julie “Brutus” Gillard, and the government went into shut down for six months, causing a knock-on effect of one poor decision after another, which sadly now seems to have become a tradition. It’s not so much what that Chair was doing; it’s what has not been reported and has gone underground in the past few years, tens and tens of millions.
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