This blog is totally independent, unpaid and has only three major objectives.
The first is to inform readers of news and happenings in the e-Health domain, both here in Australia and world-wide.
The second is to provide commentary on e-Health in Australia and to foster improvement where I can.
The third is to encourage discussion of the matters raised in the blog so hopefully readers can get a balanced view of what is really happening and what successes are being achieved.
Quote Of The Year
Timeless Quotes - Sadly The Late Paul Shetler - "Its not Your Health Record it's a Government Record Of Your Health Information"
or
H. L. Mencken - "For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong."
Note: Each link is followed by a title and few paragraphs. For the full article click on the link above title of the article. Note also that full access to some links may require site registration or subscription payment.
Matt Hancock named as health secretary in cabinet reshuffle
Matt Hancock has replaced Jeremy Hunt as the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care with the departing secretary of state claiming his successor has a ‘brilliant understanding of the power of technology’.
Hanna Crouch – July 10, 2018
The news of the cabinet reshuffle broke last night after Boris Johnson resigned as Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs and David Davis resigned as Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union.
Number 10 then announced on social media that Hunt, who became the longest serving health secretary in June 2018, was to be the new foreign secretary with Hancock also named as health secretary.
Speaking on Twitter, Hunt said it was a ‘massive wrench’ for him to leave health.
ResMed (NYSE:RMD) and Google (NSDQ:GOOG) life sciences company Verily said today they inked a new joint venture deal aiming to develop software solutions to improve diagnosis, treatment and care for sleep apnea and other breathing related sleep disorders.
The new US-based joint venture will use sleep apnea knowledge from San Diego-based ResMed and Verily’s data analytics technologies in its pursuits, the companies said, and will operate as a separate venture from both ResMed and Verily.
“The vast majority of people with sleep apnea don’t realize they have it, and therefore don’t seek accessible, effective treatment to mitigate its effects and long-term health risks. The combined industry expertise, scalable infrastructure, and data analytics capabilities of ResMed and Verily can unlock meaningful ways to identify these individuals and support their journey to improved sleep, health and quality of life,” ResMed chief medical officer Dr. Carlos Nunez said in a prepared statement.
July 12, 2018 - As patients continue to assume the role of healthcare consumer, healthcare providers and payers are beginning to leverage healthcare technology that helps connect patients to their care. Those innovations, when utilized correctly, help drive an overall better consumer experience, according to a recent Black Book survey.
The survey of nearly 650 healthcare consumers – 40 percent of whom self-identified as a younger healthcare consumer – found that the digital consumer experience is of high priority. Ninety-two percent of respondents said improving consumer experience should be a top priority for healthcare organizations, up from 71 percent of respondents who said the same in last year’s consumer survey.
Patients largely have high expectations for the health IT offerings from their providers, the survey revealed.
Singapore suffers 'most serious' data breach, affecting 1.5M healthcare patients including Prime Minister
Government describes attack as "deliberate, targeted, well-planned" and assures no medical data has been tempered with, but security vendors warn compromised data may end up for sale on the Dark Web.
Singapore has suffered its "most serious" data breach, compromising personal data of 1.5 million healthcare patients including that of its Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. The affected users are patients of SingHealth, which is the country's largest group of healthcare institutions comprising 42 clinical specialties, four public hospitals, five speciality centres, nine polyclinics, as well as three community hospitals.
Singapore government has been opening up user data access to ease information exchange and business transactions, but it should observe some caution as major organisations continue to slip up over security.
Non-medical personal details of 1.5 million patients who visited SingHealth's specialist outpatient clinics and polyclinics between May 1, 2015, and July 4, 2018, had been accessed and copied. The stolen data included patients' name, national identification number, address, gender, race, and date of birth.
In addition, outpatient medical data of some 160,000 patients were compromised, though, the records were not modified or deleted, said the Ministry of Health and Ministry of Communications and Information (MCI), in a joint statement late-Friday.
"No other patient records, such as diagnosis, test results or doctors' notes, were breached [and] we have not found evidence of a similar breach in the other public healthcare IT systems," they said.
The first sign of unusual activities was detected on July 4, 2018, by the Integrated Health Information Systems (IHiS), which is the public healthcare sector's technology agency and responsible for running local public healthcare institutions' IT systems.
The agency "acted immediately" to stop the illegal activities and implemented "additional cybersecurity precautions", whilst carrying out further investigation on the incident. Six days later, on July 10, IHiS informed the Health Ministry and Cybersecurity agency of Singapore (CSA) after confirming it had suffered a cyberattack.
However, while the attack was detected on July 4, it was later established that data "was exfiltrated" from June 27. A police report was filed on July 12 and investigations were ongoing. In the statement, CSA and IHiS described the attack as "deliberate, targeted, and well-planned".
"It was not the work of casual hackers or criminal gangs. The attackers specifically and repeatedly targeted Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong's personal particulars and information on his outpatient dispensed medicines," they said.
No further data was compromised following the discovery on July 4 and IHiS had deployed further measures to tighten the security of SingHealth's IT systems, including temporarily separating internet access from workstations, resetting user and systems accounts, and installing additional system monitoring controls.
CSA said hackers had gained control through breaching a frontend workstation, from which they then were able to obtain privileged account credentials to gain access to SingHealth's database.
Pathology and diagnostic imaging services such as blood tests, x-rays, ultrasounds, and MRIs help healthcare providers make diagnoses and monitor their patients’ progress. An increasing number of healthcare providers and their patients are now benefiting from convenient, safe, and secure access to these reports via My Health Record where they may not have access to these reports before.
Today, the Australian Digital Health Agency announced new My Health Record system connections by Victorian Cytology Service (VCS) Pathology, and Queensland based Mater Pathology, Mater Medical Imaging, and Paradise Ultrasound.
VCS Pathology Executive Director Professor Marion Saville said the company has over 50 years of experience serving Australia’s population, providing large-scale services and solutions supporting public health programs.
“VCS has built and now operates national register platforms and services in Australia and abroad to support major screening and immunisation programs, as well as operating a large pathology laboratory. The company understands the importance of providing secure and reliable access to quality information via an electronic health record.
“I am proud of the VCS Digital Team who were able to successfully complete the project to connect to the My Health Record ahead of schedule, with VCS Pathology being the first Victorian laboratory to achieve this outcome,” Professor Saville said.
More than 5.9 million Australians have a My Health Record, which contains a summary of key health information such as shared health summaries, discharge summaries, prescription and dispense records. My Health Record allows Australians to share secure health information including test results with authorised health care providers at the point of care.
Australasian College for Emergency Medicine (ACEM) President Dr Simon Judkins said providing quality care in a modern health system relies on accessible and accurate clinical and patient information.
“My Health Record offers the potential to improve the interaction of patients and physicians, the quality of patient care, as well as improving efficiency of health care delivery,” Mr Judkins said.
Agency CEO Tim Kelsey said that all pathology labs and diagnostic imaging practices in Australia are being encouraged to connect to My Health Record because these services support improved health benefits and provide increased clinical usefulness within the system.
“More than 100 pathology labs and 80 diagnostic imaging practices are now connected to My Health Record, and there are over 1.6 million pathology and 151,000 diagnostic imaging reports already uploaded to the system.
“These uploaded reports are helping Australians by improving access to their health information and to reduce unnecessary tests and scans,” Mr Kelsey said.
People with a My Health Record can access their latest pathology and diagnostic imaging reports one week after they are added to the system. This timing gives their healthcare provider time to check the report and contact them about the results if needed.
For people who do not want a report added to their My Health Record, providers can tick the ‘do not send to My Health Record’ box on the request form. People can also instruct their doctor or the pathology or diagnostic imaging service not to upload the report.
In addition, individuals can set document access controls within their My Health Record, and remove pathology and diagnostic imaging reports from their record at any time.
In some circumstances certain pathology reports may not appear in an individual’s My Health Record, even if they have not withdrawn consent for upload, in accordance with legislation. For example, reports may not be uploaded on a person’s AIDS or HIV status if there are disclosure restrictions set by state or territory legislation.
Further information
The full list of health care organisations connected to the My Health Record system is available on this web page.
If you follow the link at the bottom of the release you discover that actually recording preferences for uploading results, or not, is still a work in progress – especially as far as electronic test ordering is concerned.
You also see the ADHA has realized there are some sensitive test results that may need to be handled more sensitively – AIDS testing is mentioned. I wonder about other STI’s?
I still believe there needs to be a call centre to answer questions from patients who see results and are worried….and can’t contact their doctor.
The uploading of results may yet turn out to be a bad idea. Having such results in a secondary shared record confuses the purpose of the myHR. Is it meant to be a complete record – won’t ever be – or an emergency record – in which case test results are rarely needed ahead of medications and allergies etc.
There is no price to opting out - and you can rejoin whenever you want, but there is a risk for doing nothing and getting stuck in it with the associated risks.
