The ADHA Has Released A New Digital Health Strategy – Oh Whoopdy Do!

I noticed this press release last week announcing a new Digital Health strategy:

Digital health: focus on interoperability, collaboration bolstered with national strategy

Friday, 23 February, 2024

The Australian Digital Health Agency has launched the National Digital Health Strategy 2023–2028 and the accompanying Strategy Delivery Roadmap that set out a vision and pathway for the country’s digital health future.

The five-year strategy plan is aimed at achieving four key outcomes for digital health: digitally enabled — health services are connected, safe, secure and sustainable; person-centred — Australians are empowered to look after their health and wellbeing, with the right information and tools; inclusive — equitable access to health services, when and where they are needed; data-driven — readily available data informs decision-making at the individual, community and national level, contributing to a sustainable health system.

Australian Digital Health Agency CEO Amanda Cattermole PSM said the Strategy and Delivery Roadmap were the result of a productive collaboration between federal, state and territory governments and shaped through extensive consultations with consumers, carers, healthcare providers, research organisations and technology innovators.

“In an age of precision medicine, characterised by healthcare innovations like wearable technology and AI-driven genomic research, we are witnessing a paradigm shift towards personalised and preventative health care. The National Digital Health Strategy is essential to support this shift while fostering a connected, secure, inclusive and ethical healthcare system, backed by robust legislation,” Cattermole said.

“The Strategy captures areas of reform that require a nationally co-coordinated effort across all jurisdictions to drive transformation in digital health. The powerful partnerships behind this Strategy and Roadmap will ensure that no matter what corner of the country they call home, Australians can reap the benefits of digital health care that is tailored to their unique circumstances.”

Agency Chief Clinical Advisor Dr Steve Hambleton said advances in technology are already improving health outcomes and reducing waste. Clinical benefit and consumer engagement can only get better as programs such as sharing diagnostic tests to My Health Record by default roll out.

“Immediate access to critical diagnostic information wherever requested is a quantum leap forward in supporting clinicians to make the best decisions for the patient.

“Digital tools will never replace doctors but doctors who use digital tools will likely replace doctors who don’t,” Hambleton said. 

The roadmap initiatives are based on some key principles to guide partners and collaboration:

• Digital health solutions support a person-centred health and wellbeing system.
• Digital health is integral to care delivery and complements in-person care.
• Solutions are co-designed to reduce rather than create access barriers and to be fit for purpose and accessible.
• Solutions are developed to make information discoverable and accessible.
• Digital solutions are interoperable, reusable, coordinated, efficient and supported by the use of national healthcare identifiers.
• Governance, use and management of data is respectful, culturally responsive, meaningful and appropriate.
• Data and information are shared in accordance with jurisdiction and partnership actions under the National Agreement on Closing the Gap.
• Initiatives are developed and implemented with respect to consumer rights on access, safety, respect, partnership, information, privacy and feedback.

Here is the link:

https://www.hospitalhealth.com.au/content/technology/news/digital-health-focus-on-interoperability-collaboration-bolstered-with-national-strategy-828235392

Here is the official link:

National Digital Health Strategy

About the strategy and roadmap

Australia's National Digital Health Strategy is a 5-year plan that sets the vision and pathway for our digital health future.

It builds on the achievements of the previous National Digital Health Strategy released in 2017 and acknowledges the efforts, planning and investment to date towards digital enablement and the uplift in digital health maturity.

The strategy places people at the centre of a connected and digitally enabled healthcare system. It seeks to achieve 4 key health system outcomes that will improve the wider Australian health system by creating a more connected, person-centred digital health system and by realising the benefits digital technology offers consumers and carers, health care providers, the wider community, governments, industry and providers.

The strategy is supported by a Strategy Delivery Roadmap which sets out the implementation pathway over the 5 years.

"This next phase of digital transformation will drive information sharing and advance real time data exchange to make information available when and where it’s needed, in line with consumer consent and strong privacy and cyber security standards."

National Digital Health Strategy

The strategy and roadmap have been collaboratively produced and agreed by the Australian, state and territory governments and informed through detailed consultations with patients, consumers, carers, healthcare providers, industry, organisations and innovators.

The Australian Digital Health Agency is the custodian of the strategy, with its role being to evolve national digital health capability by innovating, collaborating and leading.

Download the strategy and roadmap

The strategy and roadmap have been produced collaboratively and agreed by the Commonwealth, state and territory governments.

The documents have been informed through detailed consultations with patients, consumers, carers, healthcare providers, industry, organisations and innovators.

Here is the link:

https://www.digitalhealth.gov.au/national-digital-health-strategy

It is worth scanning these documents, if only to be amazed at how much is to happen and just how busy the ADHA will be delivering all the various components – if they actually do!

I have seen many plans like this over the years and I am not sure just how much has actually been delivered. Change is hard and I suspect the real purpose of all this documentation is to paint a set of objectives that can be approached as the resources and skills are available.

There is no doubt that progress can happen in the directions laid out but I sense it takes a good deal longer than suggested above. It is sensible to have stretch targets and as I read, while awed by the scope, the broad directions seem sensible.

You only have to think of things like secure messaging and electronic prescribing to understand that they are happening, just not at the pace originally suggested. For how long have we been talking about electronic prescribing? How fully adopted is it now?

Still some progress is better than none – so it’s sensible to just sit back and watch as it happens, with the odd comment if things are too slow or go off the rails!

It is a worry just how slow progress seems to be and I really wonder how much of what is happening is actually due to the ADHA. They cost a fair bit each year so it would be good to see them really moving things along!

Have you noticed progress in your city or town with new services becoming available?

The other point to make is that as far as I can recall the 2017 ADHA Digital Health Strategy really was not that much different from the 2024 one. Not much strikes me as very new or very unexpected, That probably says something!

David.

It Seems There Are Some Encouraging Signs Coming From The Gene Therapy Arena.

This appeared a few days ago

‘Years my kids didn’t have’: Boost to Australian gene therapy development

February 24, 2024 — 10.00pm

 

When Megan Maack’s two children were diagnosed with a rare genetic condition causing childhood dementia in 2013, research teams overseas had a drug that could dramatically slow the disease’s progress.

But it took years for the drug to be developed to a clinical grade, and it is extremely difficult to enrol in trials of such drugs when they are held abroad.

“They were years my kids didn’t have,” said Maack, who is now CEO of the Childhood Dementia Initiative, a group advocating for the 2800 children born with conditions causing childhood dementia in Australia each year, including her children Isla, 14, and Jude, 12, who have Sanflippo syndrome.

“We need to get these drugs to kids when they are young. Once they hit a point of decline, the drug is just not effective,” she said.

“Unfortunately, at the moment, there’s just not the capability in Australia to develop clinical trials locally. It is more about developing small batches to test on mice.”

But Maack is optimistic about the future of treatment in Australia, with major investment in gene therapy in NSW that could see life-changing drugs for rare childhood diseases being produced and trialled in Sydney as early as 2025.

A $134.5 million world-leading “viral vector” manufacturing facility in western Sydney is expected to be fully operational by the end of this year.

Viral vectors – microscopic tools which deliver genetic material into cells – are providing hope in the treatment of rare genetic diseases and cancers through gene therapy, an area of medicine which has progressed rapidly in the past five years.

“It’s just unbelievable what’s evolving: the way we can fix genes is now more precise,” said Professor Ian Alexander, head of the gene therapy research unit at Sydney Children’s Hospital.

“Instead of putting an extra copy of a healthy gene in, we can go in and fix ‘spelling errors’ in existing genes.”

A recent success story has been the treatment of spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), a rare condition causing muscle wastage which is the leading cause of infant death.

An international trial of gene therapy for the condition, which involved babies treated at Sydney Children’s Hospital, was so successful that since 2022 NSW has funded free screening for the disorder in a baby’s first three days of life, to ensure early access to treatment.

Maack said this would be an ideal outcome for therapies developed for conditions causing childhood dementia. Like SMA, she said, parents are unlikely to know if their child is at risk, and early genetic treatment, before a child’s decline, is critical.

“Both parents need to have a mutation in the same gene, so you can’t look at your family history,” she said.

“The majority of families will be completely blindsided by the diagnosis.”

The state government announced today it had created a new company, registered as Viral Vector Manufacturing Facility Pty Ltd, to manage operation of the Westmead plant as it manufactures the therapies on a commercial scale, managing relationships between research teams, universities, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and other stakeholders.

“My priority as health minister has been to embrace innovative initiatives in improving health outcomes for our community,” Ryan Park said.

“These therapies are expanding rapidly, targeting more and more genetic diseases, cancer and infections, significantly increasing the number of patients who can and will benefit from viral vectors.

More here:

https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/years-my-kids-didn-t-have-boost-to-australian-gene-therapy-development-20240223-p5f7dg.html

It really must be one of the worst outcomes people can have to find their nipper(s) have a genetic flaw that will lead to disability, suffering or worse.

What is proposed here is clearly complex and expensive work with no guarantee of success and all most of us can do is watch and wait as the experts do their work and progressively more young lives can be saved / improved!

It’s good to see funding and effort are going to these endeavours. It is hard to see the rewards won’t be pretty large over time! I sure hope so….

David.

AusHealthIT Poll Number 735 – Results – 25 February, 2024.

Here are the results of the poll.

Do You Think The Next Decade Will See A Major Evolution Of Social Media Functionality And Use?

Yes                                                                           7 (31%)

No                                                                          15 (65%)

I Have No Idea                                                        1 (4%)

Total No. Of Votes: 23

A split vote with a majority not holding out much hope for improvement in social media!

Any insights on the poll are welcome, as a comment, as usual!

A poor number of votes. But also a very clear outcome! 

1 of 23 who answered the poll admitted to not being sure about the answer to the question!

Again, many, many thanks to all those who voted! 

David.

It Seems AI Is Really Making An Impact At The ‘Top-End’ Of Town!

This appeared last week.

CBA racks up "50-plus" GenAI use cases across the bank

By Ry Crozier

Feb 14 2024 2:02PM

Via experimentation environment set up last May.

Commonwealth Bank created 50-plus generative AI use cases using a safe environment it set up for experimentation in May last year.

The bank revealed the large-scale growth and usage in ancillary slides [pdf] accompanying its half-year results presentation, though did not directly address the success.

CBA said that it had practiced “responsible scaling of AI, resulting in [the] 50-plus generative AI use cases to simplify operational processes and support our frontline to serve customers” materialising between June and November last year.

These use cases, it said, were generated out of CommBank Gen.ai Studio, an H2O.ai powered environment aimed at enabling safe experimentation with large language models (LLMs).

The bank said it had also “upskilled over 500 staff on AI tools to democratise the responsible use of AI”.

In addition, CBA suggested that generative AI is enabling it to experiment more with its long-running next best conversation (NBC) engine, known as the customer engagement engine or CEE.

The CEE is used to personalise conversations and offers to customers - CEO Matt Comyn told financial analysts that, for example, the bank had recently used CEE to make “personalised pricing offers” to home loan customers coming off a fixed-rate loan.

Though somewhat cryptic, CBA indicated it had seen a “30x increase in experimentation capability within an NBC compared to [the] current CEE A/B testing framework with GenAI.”

iTnews has contacted a CBA spokesperson to clarify the findings.

Tech drives up OpEx

CBA said that continued insourcing of IT capabilities and cloud contributed to higher operating expenses in the back half of last year, but these were “more than offset” by productivity benefits.

The company’s half-year results for the six months ended December 30 showed a familiar pattern of IT and cloud’s contribution to the bank’s operating expenses.

More here:

https://www.itnews.com.au/news/cba-racks-up-50-plus-genai-use-cases-across-the-bank-605089

I guess the CBA is the toppest ‘top end of town’ you can find. AI has clearly hit the big time as a technology to be considered and reviewed!

David.

This Really Does Seem To Be A Considerable Leap Forward.

 This appeared last week.

Best Practice will use AI assistant to draft GP patient notes by ‘listening’ to consults

Best Practice is integrating an AI assistant for note-taking.

Heather Saxena

14 February 2024

Major GP software maker Best Practice is integrating a note-taking AI assistant to its desktop software.

The tool was built by Lyrebird Health, an Australian company founded eight months ago and will be fully integrated into the software which is used by around 25,000 doctors.

Best Practice claims it will save GPs who choose to use it between 60-90 minutes of note-writing every day.

How does it work, how was it tested and are there potential medico-legal risks?

Danielle Bancroft, the company’s chief product officer, answers AusDoc’s questions.

---

AusDoc: The Lyrebird tool is meant to write up clinical notes based on ‘listening’ to the consultation. How does it know what’s important to record? 

Danielle Bancroft: The tool is already programmed to know what is clinical information and reject ‘chit chat’. 

That process has improved as the database of doctors with access to the system has increased.  

If the occasional non-clinical line creeps in, and the GP deletes it from the consultation notes, the system will ‘learn’ not to include similar data in the future. 

When I first had it demonstrated to me, we were in a room with 5000 people. 

We talked about all kinds of things including the weekend footy with the kids.

It managed to remove all of that. 

AD: Does Lyrebird keep all the recordings from GP consults to ‘teach’ the AI based on real patients? 

Ms Bancroft: No, the tool captures what is said and immediately removes any identifying patient information from the audio stream while it’s being processed, as consultation notes are generated and displayed for the doctor to review. 

Each recording is only available for 24 hours after the consultation before it’s deleted. 

It’s purely there for the clinician to check against and validate the notes in that period of time.

It won’t be stored forever.  

The tool is really just short-cutting the manual part of typing up the initial notes.  

The clinician is in control of what is actually saved. 

AD: What happens during that 24-hour period? 

Ms Bancroft: During a consult, all audio is transcribed in real-time on Lyrebird Health’s Australian servers. 

At no point in time are audio files saved or permanently stored.

The audio stream from the consultation is completely encrypted and securely transferred to the servers.  

What this means is that by the time a consult is finished, all audio has already been converted to text and there is no audio remanence of the conversation. 

Even if accessed, it can’t be tied back to the individual GP or patient.

After 24 hours it is removed. 

Ensuring the recording does not persist or contain personal information minimises the risk of breach or data spill.  

AD: What about for the individual GP, the AI ‘learns’ what they want and don’t want in their notes? 

Ms Bancroft: As an example, the system generates consultation notes with default sub-headings — symptoms, observations and the like.   

If a GP removes certain subheadings they don’t use, or add new subheadings in, the notes will eventually reflect the doctor’s usual note-taking format. 

But these changes are specific to that doctor. 

Other GPs won’t find their consultation notes changing as a result. 

The tool is an enhancement to provide a more detailed base to start from for the consult note.  

It does not replace the clinician’s involvement or responsibilities.  

AD: If Lyrebird notes down something incorrectly, and there are consequences, who is held responsible? 

Ms Bancroft: The integration workflow ensures that draft consult note produced is checked by the clinician first before saving/writing to the database. 

There is a confirmation box that prompts users to double-check and confirm the accuracy of their records before they are able to export it to Best Practice. 

Lyrebird worked with medicolegal documentation experts when developing the tool. 

One described the depth of information it generates as being 3-4 times greater than what they would ordinarily write.  

Crucially, through work with doctors who specialise in the quality of records, there has been a significant increase in documentation quality when compared with notes manually recorded by a GP.

On average, less than 3% of the output text that Lyrebird generates is being edited. 

The responsibility is still on the clinician to ensure the clinical notes are accurate prior to saving, just as it is today.  

They have an opportunity to change or add to the notes before saving. 

Lyrebird consulted directly with medical defence organisations when developing the tool. 

AD: Given it’s based on what’s said aloud during the consultation, will GPs need to tweak their style? For example, if they’re taking blood pressure and both the GP and the patient can view the reading, will they need to announce it out loud? 

Ms Bancroft: In that example, GPs will have to say the blood pressure reading [out loud]. 

There’s also a little bit of change required during examinations, with GPs maybe having to pronounce what they are doing, rather than just chit-chat while they check.

AD: What if a GP or patient has a strong accent? 

Ms Bancroft: [We’ve done work] concentrating on different accents.

The more people who use the system the better that is going to get as well. 

It also gets to know the individual clinician: how they speak, how they interact with their patients and their approaches. 

AD: Will GPs need to secure patient consent specifically to use Lyrebird for note-taking? 

Ms Bancroft: When GPs hit record at the start of the consultation, a prompt will ask if they have obtained patient consent and will record whether the patient has said ‘yes, just for this consult’ or ‘yes for all consults’ or ‘no’. 

We are working on a workflow that will allow clinics to send out a SMS with a link so patients can be informed and consent before they get to the clinic at reception. 

AD: Has a system similar to this been used anywhere else by doctors and in what context? 

Ms Bancroft:  Yes, one example being clinical decision support tools that process information about the patient, their history and risk factors and measures it against known information and trends to provide prompts and suggestions back to the doctor.  

MIMS is another example.  

That information is provided based on certain triggers and known trends but ultimately the clinician is the one who takes in the information and decides next steps. 

AD: Have GPs tested the system ahead of its release? 

Ms Bancroft: Yes.  

We have a number of beta testers currently in the process of testing the integration of Lyrebird with Best Practice in advance of the Orchid Sp2 release in a few weeks.  

The metrics we use include user experience, efficiency, accuracy and future workflow enhancement.  

Best Practice clinical adviser Dr Fabrina Hossain also utilised the tool within her travel medicine clinic and focused on efficiency in terms of time saved through the day, on average 60-90 minutes per day, through not running late or staying back to flesh out and record consult notes. 

More here:

https://www.ausdoc.com.au/news/best-practice-will-use-ai-to-draft-gps-patient-notes-by-listening-to-consult/

We need to wait for the reports from the field to see how it actually performs in practice. Exciting times!

David.

This Looks Like Rather Good News On The Cancer Front!

This encouraging report appeared a few days ago.
Australian researchers unlock the secret to a future cancer vaccine

Exclusive

By Natasha Robinson

Health Editor

3:00AM February 15, 2024

Australian researchers have unlocked a crucial key to future ­cancer vaccines in a world-first discovery set to fast-track RNA-based therapeutics.

Vaccine technology took a giant leap forward with the advent of Covid-19, when mRNA vaccines proved successful and were administered to hundreds of millions of people worldwide.

But while mRNA vaccines are effective at inducing an immune response in viral disease, the technology has major challenges in its application for other diseases such as cancer, because the genetic ­material is breaks down quickly in the body and is therefore difficult to apply to other diseases.

Now scientists at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne have made a major discovery in the study of another, more robust form of RNA that could underpin the next generation of RNA-based therapeutics.

They studied a type of genetic material called circular RNA (circRNA), and discovered for the first time exactly how this compound is actively transported out of the nucleus of cells to their site of action in the body of the cell.

The discovery means that scientists will now be able to progress with harnessing circRNA in vaccines and other injectable drugs to fight cancer and other diseases.

“It’s the linear shape of mRNA that makes it relatively unstable and lack durability inside the body and this has been a limiting factor in the potential application of RNA-based therapeutics for diseases such as cancer,” explains Dr Vi Wickramasinghe, senior author on a scientific paper reporting the discovery published on Thursday in the journal Nature.

“For this reason, there’s a rising interest and excitement about another more robust form of RNA – known as circular or circRNA – which has the shape of a closed loop of genetic material, making it much more durable. However, key features of how circRNA operates within cells has remained a mystery – until now.

“Our discovery shows that these circular RNAs, which are actually made in the nucleus, they actually function in the cell’s cytoplasm,” Dr Wickramasinghe said. “Essentially, we discovered this pathway of how they get exported, or how they move from the nucleus to the cytoplasm to perform their functions. And the reason that’s important is because knowing these pathways, we can then use that information to help make the next generation of these RNA therapeutics more efficient.”

The scientists’ discovery that circRNAs are transported out of the cell in a similar way to some proteins, rather than in the same way as other types of RNA, sheds light on a mystery that many scientists around the world had been trying to unlock. There has been much scientific interest in circRNAs, particularly since the Covid vaccine revolution, but exactly how they functioned in the body has been little understood and scientifically contentious.

“This further cements evidence these circular RNAs … are made to carry out important functions in the cell – a contention that has been unclear for most of the circular RNAs discovered to date,” Dr Wickramasinghe said.

“Now this molecular mechanism is worked out, it opens up possibilities for manipulating it for beneficial outcomes such as disease therapies.”

Dr Wickramasinghe said it was now becoming clear that mRNA vaccines were “just the tip of the iceberg” in terms of the potential of gene-based therapies.

“We will look back on this in 10 years and say, ‘these RNA therapeutics have transformed medicine’, that’s how impactful it is.”

Australia has moved to set up manufacturing and research facilities to support the development of mRNA therapeutics since the pandemic, and the circRNA discovery cements the Peter MacCallum Centre as a leader in the devel­opment of RNA therapeutics.

More here:

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/science/australian-researchers-unlock-the-secret-to-a-future-cancer-vaccine/news-story/ca3be130e1f68163aaf2489d415aff11

It is really good to see the promise of RNA being realised and making it slowly to the clinic and into people’s arms! One can only hope there is lots of promise and little hype in the report!

David.

It Seems Every Time We Have A New Health Minister They Drink The myHealth Record Kool-Aide!

This interview appeared last week:

Television interview with Assistant Minister Kearney on ABC News - 15 February 2024

Read the transcript from Assistant Minister Kearney's interview on online health services and voluntary assisted dying laws.

The Hon Ged Kearney MP
Assistant Minister for Health and Aged Care

Media event date: 15 February 2024

Date published: 16 February 2024

Media type: Transcript

Audience: General public

GREG JENNETT, ABC NEWS: Now, there aren't many people around the Parliament who aren't offering best wishes to Anthony Albanese, the Prime Minister, and his partner Jodie Haydon after their engagement. Love, after all, crosses all political divides. Joy in the occasion is also shared by the Assistant Health Minister, Ged Kearney. We spoke to her starting out on the prime ministerial engagement.
 
[Excerpt]
 
Ged Kearney, welcome back to Afternoon Briefing. It's nice to have you with us here in the studio.
 
GED KEARNEY, ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR HEALTH AND AGED CARE: [Talks over] Thanks, Greg.
 
JENNETT: I'm going to get to things in the health portfolio very, very quickly, I promise, but can't go past the fact that the Prime Minister and Jodie Haydon have announced their engagement. As far as we know, the first prime ministerial engagement slash wedding in office that we've ever had in this country. Makes it a pretty special day.
 
KEARNEY: Oh, it really does. And who knew the Prime Minister was such a romantic, doing it on Valentine's Day? It's a great announcement. We're all so happy for them. They're a gorgeous couple and we look forward to the wedding.

……

KEARNEY: Well, since we've been elected, we have injected over $1 billion into the digital health sector. It's an area that we think we have to really take up because it will, I think, advance health care dramatically for patients, which is really what we're here for. So, for example, we're finding that the uptake of My Health Record – something that we are very serious about expanding if we can – has been phenomenal. We've had a 40 per cent increase in the last year of records that have been uploaded into-
 
JENNETT: [Interrupts] What do you put that down to? Because there was an initial reluctance.
 
KEARNEY: There was an initial reluctance. I think there's a couple of things. I think during COVID, people got quite used to seeing health results digitally. I think that's part of it. But even more importantly, is that we now have about 99 per cent of GPs actually engaging with My Health Records, uploading patients’ results and treatment onto it, and encouraging their patients to use the My Health Record. It's so good. When I was a nurse, we used old paper files and they got lost. They got scribbled on, they got torn up, they got things spilt on them. You know, it was terribly inefficient. Having it all on your phone or in a digital record, I think, is so much more efficient and will certainly aid patient treatment.
 
JENNETT: It does seem to be accelerating after a pretty sluggish start in this country. Ged Kearney, I might just take you to one other area that's kind of related to digital health services. It's an anomaly that's been highlighted by Kate Chaney and oncologists this week on this program and in the Parliament. Now that we've got voluntary assisted dying laws in each Australian state, either in place or coming, it remains a criminal offence for a doctor to provide advice or consultations using a carriage service. That's the legal term, but to you and me, a phone or internet connection. The age-old reason being that it might have promoted suicide. It's viewed differently through voluntary assisted dying laws now. Is that an anomaly? Is that what the Government views it as and what will it do about it?
 
……

Here is the link:

https://www.health.gov.au/ministers/the-hon-ged-kearney-mp/media/television-interview-with-assistant-minister-kearney-on-abc-news-15-february-2024?language=en

Again we have a new Minister who thinks it is wonderful that all these records are being uploaded to the myHR and takes that as a measure of success!

That many of these uploads are totally automated and that there is no information on how many of these uploads are actually being referenced or used seems to be of no relevance!

The update on usage of the myHR is found here:

https://www.digitalhealth.gov.au/initiatives-and-programs/my-health-record/statistics

In the Jan 2024 Update we find there are 1.2 Billion documents in the system.

Of those 507K are from consumers.

Consumer usage seems to slowing a little with 6 million data views in January. Sadly it is unclear just what data is being viewed.

GP, Aged Care and specialist use of the myHR still seems pretty low.

We still have no measure of the clinical impact of the myHR sadly.

I have no idea why the Minister thinks all this is great! I wonder does she think the $400M per annum spent on the myHR is value for money?

My view is still that the myHR is a useless lemon. Comment if you disagree with reasons!

David.

I Wonder What Will Come Next In The World Of Social Media?

This appeared last week and encouraged me to wonder where we are going with social media:

Facebook is 20. It still hasn’t grown up

David Swan

Technology Editor

February 11, 2024 — 5.00am

Facebook has turned 20.

The social media company that began life in 2004 as a “hot or not” website from 19-year-old Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg, eventually growing into a $1 trillion behemoth, would now be old enough to legally, in Australia at least, drink and smoke if it were a person.

Some say Facebook is the new tobacco: an addictive substance that doles out regular dopamine hits – in Facebook’s case in the form of “likes” and comments – with severe negative health consequences, particularly for young people.

It’s arguably worse and, like smoking, we likely won’t know the true impact for decades.

The story of Facebook’s first 20 years is one of initial promise and optimism being replaced over its evolution by rampant privacy intrusions, misinformation and an overall malaise that has long dogged the company, though not its share price.

Facebook’s decline – setting aside its eye-watering valuation – is symptomatic of the ruination of everything we once loved about the internet.

It has fallen victim to “enshittification”, a term coined by the writer and futurist Cory Doctorow to describe the decay of online platforms. As Doctorow put it: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.

Nearly every online service you can think of – Twitter, Reddit, Google search and Bandcamp – are now shadows of their former selves thanks to enshittification, and Facebook is arguably the poster child.

Facebook was once a far more friendly, fun and innocent place to spend time online. It was a simpler platform, and it was good to its users. Its feed was filled with inane status updates (everyone must know what I just had for dinner), tedious photos of said dinner, and general life updates including new jobs and successful marriage proposals.

Its premise was simple: to be a place to connect with your friends and family online. It could be a time suck, sure, but a time suck without the toxicity and rampant misinformation that we have now.

But gradually Facebook changed. What began as a tool for connection became a hub of division and unforseen consequences. The feed became increasingly flooded with advertising, fake news and abuse. When their parents joined, many users – in particular those aged 18 to 30 – left the platform altogether, flocking instead to cooler platforms like TikTok, or switching to group chats and texting.

While Facebook’s first decade was largely successful, its second has seen it deteriorate in the face of scandal after scandal. The company has failed at every hurdle to accept responsibility for the content posted on its platform and, even two decades in, has not proven it can be trusted to act in the best interests of its users.

In 2012, the company conducted experiments on around 70,000 users without their consent, removing certain words from their newsfeeds to test how it affected their reactions to posts. It took two years for those experiments to be made public.

Nearly 10 years later, in 2021, employee-turned-whistleblower Frances Haugen testified before US Congress that the company puts profits over safety. Haugen helped release the so-called “Facebook Papers” which detailed the platform’s fading popularity with teenagers and its inability to counter hate speech.

That same year, Facebook blocked the pages of Australian charities, health organisations and government services during a pandemic and raging bushfires, all to protest a law that would force it to compensate local publishers for news.

And, in 2022, the company paid a whopping $1.1 billion to finally settle legal action relating to the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which hundreds of millions of Facebook users had their personal data released en masse to third parties without consent.

Facebook’s algorithms, which remain shrouded in secrecy, have often fed our worst tendencies, encouraging everything from home decor envy to political extremism and violence, as has been seen in the US and Myanmar.

Earlier this month, it became apparent just how unrecognisable Facebook is now from its 2004 self. In front of the US Senate Committee, Zuckerberg and other Silicon Valley executives were forced to face parents holding photographs of their dead children, who were victims of online sexual exploitation and cyberbullying.

Senators were united across the aisle about the damage done by the likes of Facebook to the health and wellbeing of children.

“They’re responsible for many of the dangers our children face online,” the judiciary committee’s chairman, Democrat Dick Durbin said. “Their design choices, their failures to adequately invest in trust and safety, their constant pursuit of engagement and profit over basic safety have all put our kids and grandkids at risk.”

Republican Senator Josh Hawley – who couldn’t be more different politically from Durbin – also repeatedly criticised Zuckerberg.

“Your product is killing people,” he told the executive.

More here:

https://www.smh.com.au/technology/facebook-is-20-it-still-hasn-t-grown-up-20240206-p5f2q6.html

I think it is fair to say most of the social media platforms have become unrecognisable over the period since they opened  for use and that since then huge numbers of users have left – myself included – due to the unappealing way the platforms seem to work and the dominance of all sorts of unwanted advertising and other unwanted influences.

All the platforms seem to have mostly lost the ‘social’ aspect of their operations and many are now ‘no fun’ to use anymore, and have lost track of their core purpose.

To me the question is what can come next and attract users while fostering more interested and useful behaviour! I am sure the platform is out there already but that not many have noticed so far! It will be interesting to see what emerges over the next decade or so.

David.