Note: I have excluded (or marked out) any commentary taking significant funding from the Agency or the Department of Health on all this to avoid what amounts to paid propaganda. (e.g. CHF, RACGP, AMA, National Rural Health Alliance etc. where they were simply putting the ADHA line – viz. that the myHR is a wonderfully useful clinical development that will save huge numbers of lives at no risk to anyone – which is plainly untrue) (This signifies probable ADHA Propaganda)
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Note: I have also broadened this section to try to cover all the privacy and security compromising and impacting announcements in the week – along with the myHR. It never seems to stop! Sadly social media platforms get a large run this week.
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Media release - Better Connected: a national conversation begins on a roadmap for a more modern, digitally connected health system
5 April 2019: The Australian Digital Health Agency has today opened an online consultation for all Australians, including frontline clinicians, consumers, healthcare organisations and the technology sector to have their say on a more modern, digitally connected health system.
The
online consultation is part of a nationwide series of discussions used to co-design the National Health Interoperability Roadmap, which will agree the standards and priorities required to achieve a more modern digitally connected health system in Australia.
The Roadmap is a key priority of the National Digital Health Strategy, which was approved by all states and territories through the Council of Australian Government (COAG) Health Council in 2017.
The National Digital Health Strategy highlights the importance of connected health services and calls for the definition of standards to support interoperability that will support clinicians, patients and citizens make the best health and care decisions.
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Google to pull plug on AI ethics council
Dissolves body it formed a week earlier.
Alphabet Inc's Google said on Thursday it was dissolving a council it had formed a week earlier to consider ethical issues around artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies.
The council had run into controversy over two of its members, according to online news portal Vox, which first reported the dissolution of the council.
The council, launched on March 26, was meant to provide recommendations for Google and other companies and researchers working in areas such as facial recognition software, a form of automation that has prompted concerns about racial bias and other limitations.
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FAQ: Australia’s new ‘abhorrent violent material’ laws
New laws seek swift takedown of violent acts filmed by the perpetrators or their accomplices
The government has managed to push legislation responding to the live-streaming of the Christchurch terror attack
at breakneck speed. The legislation was introduced and passed in the Senate last night with no debate, and this morning passed by the House of Representatives with bipartisan support.
What are the offences created by the legislation?
The new laws create two offences. The first one applies to Internet service providers and providers of a hosting service or content service. It creates an obligation to report ‘abhorrent violent material’ (or material reasonably believed to be abhorrent violent material) to the Australian Federal Police if that service can be used to access the material, and the conduct involved is taking place (or took place) in Australia.
The material must be reported to the AFP within “within a reasonable time after becoming aware of the existence of the material”. A “reasonable time” depends on the circumstances, according to the government. Attorney-General Christian Porter today said that it was unacceptable that the Christchurch attack footage was available on Facebook “for well over an hour without them taking any action whatsoever”.
The second offence relates to a failure to remove or cease hosting abhorrent violent material. It applies to content and hosting service providers. A content service provider is guilty of an offence if they fail to remove access to abhorrent violent material in an “expeditious” manner, if that material is “reasonably capable” of being accessed within Australia. A hosting provider is guilty of an offence if they fail remove abhorrent violent material from their service (again in an “expeditious” manner and if the material is capable of being accessed in Australia).
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Cuscal encourages single consent, identity mechanism for data right
Not consumers' job to battle with complexity.
Cuscal and the leader of the government’s review into open banking in Australia have urged all industries impacted by the forthcoming consumer data right to coordinate on a single method of collecting consent and establishing digital identity.
The payments processor’s emerging services head of product Nathan Churchward,
government open banking review leader and King & Wood Mallesons partner Scott Farrell, and KPMG’s Australian banking sector head Ian Pollari issued the call as part of a recent webcast.
Churchward said that Cuscal’s clients were “working with their core banking systems to ensure that the capabilities and the data strategies” for open banking and the consumer data right were in place.
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Scrutiny on health data harvest
- By Anna Wilde Mathews
- The Wall Street Journal
- 1:21PM April 3, 2019
Technology and healthcare companies are competing to develop new ways for consumers to corral their digital health data, prompting questions about data privacy and control.
Companies such as Apple and UnitedHealth are rolling out online tools that consumers can use to bring together health information now siloed in the systems of hospitals, doctors and insurers. These personal health records aim to consolidate information like diagnoses and lab results for consumers to access easily via their smartphones or computers.
The rush to create personal health records was spurred by recent Trump administration moves to expand access to such data. Other tech and health firms working to create the records include giant insurer Cigna, companies such as Epic Systems and Cerner that make hospitals’ electronic medical records, and a growing array of smaller start-ups such as Seqster and PicnicHealth.
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Google is keeping an eye on you
Google can scavenge information about people, glean their location, interests, product choices and habits from the huge volumes of data it collects.
A couple learns they’re having a baby. They are exhilarated but careful about who they initially share this information with. Unfortunately the tracking capabilities of their phones are not so discreet.
The tech giants can work out a pending baby in many ways. Location tracking can reveal regular visits to an antenatal clinic, or changes to your purchasing habits, such as buying calcium and magnesium supplements or various medicines.
Sometimes the news leaks out inadvertently. There was the recent case of Gillian Brockwell, a writer for The Washington Post who wrote a public letter to the tech giants in December. It implored them to stop bombarding her with maternity-related ads after her baby was stillborn. She admits she probably looked up maternity wear on Google, clicked baby-related Facebook ads, or maybe used #babybump once too often as an Instagram hashtag.
The ad tracking was not clever enough to work out hers was one of the 24,000 stillbirths in the US every year.
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App developers leave millions of Facebook user records exposed
By Tony Romm and Elizabeth Dwoskin
April 4, 2019 — 10.58am
More than 540 million Facebook records — including users' comments, likes, account names and more — were left exposed on an Amazon cloud-computing server, researchers have discovered on Wednesday, marking the latest major privacy and security mishap to plague the social-networking giant.
The trove is one of two data-sets discovered to be in full public view by the security firm UpGuard, which also raised alarms with an app developer that mishandled Facebook records that included users' interests and potentially their app passwords.
Facebook said its policies prohibit app developers from "storing information in a public database," adding in a statement that it has worked with Amazon to take them down.
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Warnings over pushback on consumer data right
3 April, 2019
The government has to tread carefully with new Consumer Data Right laws, the national consumer group says.
The nation’s largest consumer organisation has warned about a My Health-style push back against proposed consumer data right laws as Australia’s competition watchdog floats potential changes.
The ACCC’s revised draft was released after the CEO of CHOICE Australia flagged concerns about the proposed legislation, warning it takes “one major stuff-up” or data breach for consumer trust to be irreparably damaged.
The CDR, starting with the banking and telecommunications sectors, will eventually give customers a right to direct that their data be shared with others. Future sectors subject to the CDR will be designated by the Treasurer.
But Choice CEO Alan Kirkland last week echoed concerns first raised by Labor’s shadow minister for the digital economy Ed Husic who warned the CDR could become the next My Health Record.
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Volume 210 Issue 6 Supplement
31 March 2019
Expanding the evidence base in digital health
Coordinating editors:
Meredith Makeham and Angela Ryan
Meredith AB Makeham and Angela Ryan
Med J Aust 2019; 210 (6 Suppl): S3-S4 Open Access
Steven J Hambleton and John Aloizos AM
Med J Aust 2019; 210 (6 Suppl): S5-S6 Open Access
Paul Miles, Andrew Hugman, Angela Ryan, Fiona Landgren and Grace Liong
Med J Aust 2019; 210 (6 Suppl): S7-S9 Open Access
And a whole lot more:
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GDHP Reports
3 April 2019
These reports aim to share country experiences of digital health in key areas of challenge and debate to aid in the presenting of persuasive positions for planning, prioritised investments, strategic approaches, and evaluation of digital health initiatives.
We hope that these reports provide both member and non-member countries with guidance on the key digital health enablers that can lead to improving the health and well-being of citizens at national and sub-national levels through the best use of evidence-based digital technologies.
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Big banks grapple with data ethics
Apr 3, 2019 — 12.00am
The group, the Data Institute, is not a lobby group and has no political agenda, says its chairman Michelle Pinheiro, an ANZ executive.
Controls around data sharing were evolving quickly and data governance was no longer just about organising and managing data assets but governing advanced data analytics and AI, she said ahead of the institute's launch on Wednesday.
"Data governance has to change and adapt. Data is not just a blunt instrument. There’s a lot of power in data, and you have to wield it appropriately,” she said.
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Tech giants have hijacked data science ethics: law professor
A technology law professor has told a conference on data science ethics that the discipline has been co-opted by “Big Tech”, the few immensely rich and powerful companies that control the gathering and use of personal information.
“I want to provide a provocative thesis that artificial intelligence ethics to date has been a singularly effective strategy for not talking about, not advancing or actioning today’s most pressing issues surrounding the advancement of digital technologies,” Julia Powles told the University of Sydney’s Ethics of Data Science conference last week.
The associate professor of technology law and policy at the University of Western Australia said academe failed to talk about “the political, cultural and economic might of Big Tech, the likes of Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft” and rising oligopolists such as Tencent and Alibaba.
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AI, robots will hasten inequality
The rise of artificial intelligence and increased automation of the workforce could accentuate the “winner-takes-all effect” in society and accelerate inequality, according to a senior research fellow at a think tank founded by multi-billionaire George Soros.
Lord Adair Turner, a senior research fellow at the Soros-funded think tank Institute for New Economic Thinking and chairman of Britain’s Energy Transitions Commission, told a conference in Melbourne yesterday the biggest problem to arise from increased automation in society was “not unemployment, but inequality”.
He said with the rise of the so-called FANG (Facebook, Apple, Netflix and Google) stocks, enormous wealth had accrued to the small number of people who created the software machinery “that runs much of the world” or those who had been lucky enough to get in early.
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We lag world in using health data for good: Microsoft exec
Microsoft chief medical officer Simon Kos says Australia is at a tipping point in its use of healthcare technology and it needs to “leapfrog” to catch up to other countries in using data to improve health outcomes.
Dr Kos said Australia had spent a lot of time on health digitising but it had not given a lot of thought to what to do once a significant data asset had been built, and how that data could then be used to transform care.
“Countries that have been digital for many years are well down that journey already,” he said. “In Australia, we are at that tipping point — we need to use that data to drive improvements in care.
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Budget 2019: Tech’s big winners
Skills, My Health Record and GovPass lead the way.
By Roulla Yiacoumi on Apr 02 2019 11:12 PM
Skills development, My Health Record, and GovPass were the big-ticket tech winners in this year’s federal budget which was otherwise light on tech spend.
In his first budget as Federal Treasurer, Josh Frydenberg splashed millions, forecasting a $7.1 billion surplus for Australia, declaring the budget is “back in the black and Australia is back on track”.
The establishment of a National Skills Commission to focus retraining in the VET sector scored $132.4 million over four years, while an initiative to upskill “at-risk” workers with digital skills was allocated $62.4 million.
According to ACS Australia’s Digital Pulse 2018, Australia will need at least 100,000 technology workers in the next four years to simply meet demand.
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Facebook lifts lid on news feed
Tech giant Facebook has finally got an answer for ‘why am I seeing this post?”, with the company somewhat lifting the lid on its algorithm that decides which posts appear in your news feed.
The feature, rolled out today, offers users extra insight into the tens of thousands of inputs used by the social network to rank the stories, photos and video that bombard your feed.
“The basic thing that this tool does is let people see why they are seeing a particular post in their news feed, and it helps them access the actions they might want to take if they want to change that,” Facebook’s Head of News Feed John Hegeman said.
The company’s new feature will detail some of the interactions that lead the algorithm to reach its conclusion, Mr Hegeman said, although it will not show all of the inputs.
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Privacy Act amendments to pack a punch
Attorney-General The Hon Christian Porter MP has announced the government’s intention to introduce a raft of tougher penalties under the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) (Privacy Act). While coverage of the new penalties has focussed on the potential fines for tech giants such as Google and Facebook, the changes, if enacted, could have a significant financial impact for all organisations operating in (or connected to) Australia.
What are the proposed changes?
The amendments to the Privacy Act include the following:
· increased penalties for all entities covered by the Act, which includes social media and online platforms operating in Australia:
· provide the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) with new infringement notice powers backed by new penalties of:
· expand other options available to the OAIC to ensure breaches are addressed through third-party reviews, and/or publish prominent notices about specific breaches and ensure those directly affected are advised;
· require social media and online platforms to stop using or disclosing an individual's personal information upon request; and
· introduce specific rules to protect the personal information of children and other vulnerable groups.
· these changes are being backed by an AUD 25 million increase to the OAIC’s funding over the next 3 years.
The Attorney-General has announced the increased penalties saying that the current regime under the Privacy Act “fall[s] short of community expectations”. Social media and online platforms have also been singled out by the Attorney-General because of the increased reach of these organisations which trade in personal information over the past decade.
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Heralding a more aggressive approach by the privacy commissioner? Government signals amendments to privacy law
On Monday 25 March, the Government
announced plans to reform Australia’s privacy laws, as well as a significant boost to funding for Australia’s privacy regulator, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (
OAIC).
While the announcement appeared to be directed toward concerns regarding the behaviour of technology and social media companies, the reforms to the penalty and enforcement regime would apply generally to all entities subject to the Privacy Act.
The proposed reforms include:
- an increase to the maximum penalty for serious and repeated interferences with privacy – up from $2.1m (for corporate entities) to the greater of $10m, 3 times the value of any benefit obtained through the misuse of the information and 10% of a company’s annual domestic turnover;
- additional enforcement powers for the OAIC to issue infringement notices to companies and individuals for a failure to undertake remedial action to resolve minor privacy breaches. The maximum fines proposed are $63,000 for companies and $12,600 for individuals;
- greater enforcement and remedial powers for the OAIC, including the ability to publicise specific breaches and notify affected individuals;
- a requirement that technology and social media companies cease using or disclosing an individual’s personal information on request;
- specific rules to protect the personal information of children and other vulnerable groups; and
- a new code for social media and online platforms dealing with how they may collect, use and disclose personal information.
In order to fund the expected increase in regulatory intervention by the OAIC under the revised regime, the Government also announced a $25 million increase to the OAIC’s funding over three years, to be announced in the forthcoming budget (in addition to the funding increase of $12.9 million the OAIC received in relation to the Consumer Data Right regime).
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Top trends in digital health – insights from the MSIA
29 March 2019: Emma Hossack and Robert Best from the Medical Software Industry Association share their insights with us.
The
Medical Software Industry Association (MSIA) has represented the interests of Australia’s health software industry and promoted the value of technology in improving health outcomes for 20 years. Its support has been a key factor in the continuing success of the local Australian software industry.
Emma Hossack (CEO) and
Robert Best (President) are leading the MSIA in 2019. They provide a collective voice and unique insights and perspectives on the products and services the software industry provides healthcare practitioners and healthcare organisations, as well as contributing to the rapidly developing digital health sector.
#Share: What are the hot topics in digital health for the year ahead? There’s a tremendous amount of buzz around things like artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain, but I wonder if less “buzzy” topics like achieving interoperability will be more important, at least for the coming year.
EH - The amount of buzz around blockchain has
settled down recently. Blockchain has useful applications and potential in research, analytics and digital contracts which need authentication. It’s not universally suitable for healthcare though, because in areas such as an operating theatre you need instantaneous response. AI and machine learning on the other hand, have been used to great advantage and will continue to be developed in various applications. For consumers booking an appointment, say, it’s great for the AI to point out that you need your pathology tests done, so you might want to reschedule for another time. AI decision support for clinicians looks very promising and is a burgeoning area for our industry.
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Singapore proposes law to crack down on 'fake news'
Singapore has proposed a law to police social media, with those who spread lies online that harm the public interest to be jailed for 10 years, while companies that host the falsehoods would be fined up to S$1 million (A$1.03 million).
For individuals, the fines will be up to S$20,000 and the jail terms would extend up to a year. The proposed law would be triggered by false information uploaded online provided it was in the public interest for the government to act.
The Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Bill, tabled in the country's Parliament on Monday, will make it mandatory for social media companies like Facebook to act fast to remove such bogus content, the
Straits Times reported.
The law has been in the works for nearly two years, with the Home Affairs and Law Minister K. Shanmugam
telling a conference in June 2017 that the legislation would be introduced the following year.
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Research Impact: Valuing health for better decision making
With billions spent on healthcare nationally each year, and with ongoing development of new health technologies and treatments, informed decision-making in healthcare has never been more important.
Griffith University’s
Centre for Applied Health Economics (CAHE) is among the world’s leading research organisations providing healthcare professionals and decision makers with advice on the safety, efficacy and efficiency of treatments and services.
CAHE delivers essential research, informing the allocation of $2.33 billion in federal government expenditure between 2011 and 2016.
Health budget savings estimated at $7.4 billion were also achieved over this period, through CAHE research that identified technologies that were not cost-effective. The Centre’s evaluation of technologies, pharmaceuticals, medical services and diagnostic tests has a direct impact on whether these are funded under Medicare, and to what extent.
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My Health Record: a community pharmacy perspective
- Shane Jackson, Gregory Peterson
- Aust Prescr 2019;42:46-7
- 1 April 2019
- DOI: 10.18773/austprescr.2019.009
Digital healthcare records aim to facilitate the delivery of safe, efficient and effective health care while connecting different points of the healthcare system so that information can be shared securely. These records can impact on almost every aspect of healthcare delivery. This includes how healthcare professionals and patients interact with each other, how health information is stored and used, and how patients manage their own health through electronic apps and devices. Due to the rapid evolution of digital health care, today’s health professionals, including pharmacists, need an understanding of the expectations, opportunities and challenges that digital health technologies present.
The My Health Record system is one of the first initiatives in the world aimed at delivering an electronic, personally controlled health record for the entire population of a country. The Australian Government determined that by the end of 2018 every Australian would have a My Health Record unless they chose not to.
One of the key potential benefits of a national electronic health record will be a reduction in the risk of medication misadventure (adverse drug events and medication errors), which results in more than 230,000 Australians being admitted to hospital each year. These hospitalisations cost the healthcare system at least $1.2 billion annually. However, this represents the tip of the iceberg because this figure does not include general practice or specialist visits, the cost of investigations, or presentations to community pharmacy.
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Paul's Insights: The danger of stolen data
Chairman
1 Apr 2019
There was a time when crooks made off with television sets or jewellery - items that were easy to cart off and hock around town. These days, they focus on far more transportable stuff, like details of our personal accounts. And it's an all too lucrative business.
Mention cyberattacks, and we often think of dodgy malware that infects entire computer systems. But for cyber-crims, malware is yesterday’s news. ‘Credential stuffing’ is the latest trend among cyber-thieves.
In mid-March the Australian Federal Police arrested a Sydney man who had allegedly made $300,000 selling account details including email addresses and usernames for subscribers of various websites.
The man is believed to have got hold of these details through a process known as credential stuffing.
In simple terms, credential stuffing involves a hacker feeding thousands or millions of stolen username and password combinations (obtained on the black market) into multiple websites to see if any of the details match a live account.
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'Devastating': Robots to take 6.5 million jobs
Patrick Durkin
Apr 1, 2019 — 6.01am
Microsoft Australia managing director Steven Worrall and Telstra executive Michael Ebeid warn that business, governments and workers are woefully unprepared for robots to displace up to 6.5 million jobs.
The pair join tech heavyweights such as Atlassian's Mike Cannon-Brookes and venture capitalist Daniel Petre
who warn "we need to act now", ahead of a
major conference kicking off on Monday to urge action.
"If we do not get this transition right it will be devastating to the standard of living for many Australians," Mr Petre told The Australian Financial Review.
The co-founder of AirTree Ventures and friend to Bill Gates worked with others including Catherine Livingstone on a landmark McKinsey report
released this month. It warns that up to 46 per cent of existing work activities could be automated in Australia by 2030, displacing between 3.5 million and 6.5 million full-time jobs.
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Healthcare in the hands of robots
Global giant Johnson & Johnson’s chief Alex Gorsky says there has never been a more exciting time in healthcare innovation, as he flags future robotics and machine learning to drive improved outcomes.
The chairman and chief executive of J&J said technology integration and the digitisation of healthcare were among the top macro trends he was seeing globally in healthcare. He said that trend was being driven by the pace and rate of technology.
Mr Gorsky added that the industry was starting to see more developments around what would traditionally be associated with Silicon Valley. “Whether that is cloud, robotic, AI or machine learning being connected in a more fundamental way to healthcare, it’s producing some incredibly promising breakthroughs,” he said.
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Google reclaiming identity labels to improve machine learning abuse filters
Heads to Mardi Gras to teach its neural networks that 'gay' is not a toxic term
Train a machine learning model to detect ‘toxic’ words in online comments and it comes to some depressing conclusions.
During Google’s ongoing work on
Perspective, an API that uses machine learning to detect abuse and harassment online, engineers found the models identified sentences that use words such as ‘gay’, ‘lesbian’ or ‘transgender’ as abusive.
“Unfortunately what happens when we give it this input – I’m a proud gay person – is the model predicts this is toxic,” said Google AI senior software engineer Ben Hutchinson at an ethics of data science conference at the University of Sydney last week.
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Opinion: Why smartphones will work better than smart eHealth cards in Australia
Grahame Grieve | 02 Apr 2019
Several experts that presented to the senate panel investigating the My health Record in 2019 argued that instead of a central data repository, Australia should instead, invest in a smart card based infrastructure to store consumers’ health care records.
These experts proposed an approach where each individual carries their own smart card, and healthcare providers load information to and read information from the card during encounters with health care providers.
The experts claimed that using smart cards avoids the central problem of the My Health Record system: a single consolidated record of all health information, with dual consequences:
- All patients are held to a single set of policy choices about how their information is shared and managed
- The single repository is a large, attractive target for hackers and any successful hacks may yield many records.
Most of the focus was on the second point – a single gathering of such a large amount of healthcare information is a natural target for hackers of various kinds.
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Opinion: Is there a smarter way for the controversial My Health Record system?
Paul Power | 01 Apr 2019
Good systems analysis requires adherence to a simple recipe – understanding who the stakeholders are and their needs, establishing design goals and working collaboratively to attain them. So how can the My Health Record system, which began in 2012 as opt-in and changed to opt-out 2018, be done better?
We like to think the stakeholders are healthcare recipients and providers Australia wide. We would regard privacy, security and utility of health information as key design goals. We would hope that the many design aspects such as legislative, governance, administrative, medical and technical, be developed in harmony.
Yet, all these aspects, when recently exposed to public scrutiny, have been found wanting.
Researchers at Deakin University Law School under Professor Danuta Mendelson were quoted in Australian Doctor in December 2016 saying, "The My Health Record system appears more suited to supply data for government agencies and researchers than it is suited to healthcare".
If the stakeholders rightfully were the Australian healthcare consumers and providers, we should be engaged in the design process and the design goals of utility, security and privacy should be achieved.
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Keeping up with the trends
It’s hard to keep up with the seemingly constant changes and developments in technology. We sought the views of a range of industry experts on the major trends, developments and concerns that you need to be aware of.
It’s hard enough to keep up with changes relating to your personal technology needs and requirements, so when business and professional technology changes are thrown into the mix, it can be a daunting prospect that leave many in pharmacy floundering.
There are constant changes in the automated systems available to help dispensing, packaging etc, changes to IT systems, dispensing software, technology security requirements and threats around data security…. The list of things to keep abreast of is seemingly endless.
We’ve spoken to a range of experts from different areas of pharmacy, and the surrounding industry, to seek their tips on some of the most relevant new developments that you need to be aware of.
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How does My Health Record affect me?
What is My Health Record?
My Health Record (MHR) is an online summary of your key health information. It collects information from you, your health care provider and Medicare. In 2019 all Australians will have a MHR, unless they opt out.
When you have a My Health Record, your health information can be viewed securely online, from anywhere, at any time.
- Why do we have it?
Remembering your medical history can be tough! Especially if you go to many doctors or move around a lot. Having a centralised, online health record allows you to store your medical history. Therefore, when you go to a new doctor, they will be able to instantly see your medical history. This is beneficial for knowing your vaccine history, remembering allergies and many others things.
Additionally, MHR allows for better coordination between healthcare providers, hopefully leading to improved experiences at the doctors. It will also assist allied health workers in an emergency, as they will have access to your medical history straight away
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Comments welcome!
David.
