By Geoffrey A. Fowler
November 2, 2019 — 3.08pm
Just when you thought we had hit rock bottom on all the ways the internet could snoop on us - no. We've sunk even lower.
There's a tactic spreading across the web named after treatment usually reserved for criminals: fingerprinting. A large part of the websites we frequently visit use hidden code to run an identity check on your computer or phone.
November 3, 2019 — 5.00am
There has been an exponential growth in the number of health apps but experts have warned they can be ineffective and inaccurate, and users are also risking the privacy of their personal data.
The options when it comes to health apps are seemingly endless:
a 2017 report said there were more than 3 million of them on app stores with about 200 new ones being created on a daily basis.
Health Informatics Society of Australia board member and secretary Dr Jen Bichel-Findlay said the sheer number made it hard for consumers to work out what apps were backed by evidence and which ones were not.
"You can just type in diabetes [in the app store] and up comes an entire range of apps, and you have no idea what it does and if in fact it’s going to be useful for you," she said.
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By Matt O'Brien
November 2, 2019 — 6.15am
Google, the company that helped make it fun to just sit around surfing the web, is jumping into the fitness-tracker business with both feet, buying Fitbit for about $US2.1 billion ($3 billion).
The deal could put Google in direct competition with Apple and Samsung in the highly competitive market for smartwatches and other wearable electronics. But it also raises questions about privacy and Google's dominance in the tech industry.
Fitbit has 28 million active users worldwide and has sold more than 100 million devices.
The company's announcement Friday came with a promise that it won't sell ads using the intimate health data that Fitbit devices collect.
Fitbit is a pioneer in wearable fitness technology, making a range of devices that have become pop-culture accessories, from basic trackers that count how many steps you take each day to smartwatches that display messages and notifications from phones.
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Medicine safety to be 10th National Health Priority Area
The Pharmaceutical Society of Australia
The Pharmaceutical Society of Australia commends Federal, state and territory health ministers for making medicine safety the 10th National Health Priority Area and recognising the urgent need to ensure medicines improve the health of Australians, not put them at risk of harm.
“Use of medicines is the most common intervention we make in health care. Medicines are meant to help us get better, not make our health worse,” Pharmaceutical Society of Australia National President A/Prof Chris Freeman said.
“As PSA’s
Medicine Safety: Take Care report found 250,000 Australians are hospitalised each year and another 400,000 present to emergency departments as a result of medication errors, inappropriate use, misadventure and interactions. At least half of these problems could have been prevented.
“The annual cost of medication-related hospital admissions in Australia is nearly $1.4 billion. This is equivalent to 15 per cent of total PBS expenditure and is money that could be much better spent.” This cost doesn’t include extra presentations to emergency departments or to general practice or community pharmacy.
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The fifth estate: social media giants face a growing backlash
· 12:00AM November 2, 2019
At the same time as Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg was giving his big speech at Georgetown University last week, trying to rework the debate about his company into one about free speech instead of publishing lies, there were protests everywhere.
It’s so much quicker and easier to organise a protest now. The social networks are free and ubiquitous, which means you can communicate with other angry people instantly, everywhere, and get them to join you in the street.
In his speech, Mark Zuckerberg came up with the expression “the fifth estate”, as in: “People having the power to express themselves at scale is a new kind of force in the world — a fifth estate alongside the other power structures of society. People no longer have to rely on traditional gatekeepers in politics or media to make their voices heard, and that has important consequences.”
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My Health Record system notification - Planned Upgrade (1 November 2019 - 5.30pm-10.30pm AEDT)
The My Health Record System Operator advises that there will be a planned upgrade to Release 10.2.1 of the My Health Record system Production Environment on Friday, 1st November 2019 from 5:30pm to 10:30pm (AEDT).
During the restricted-write period, the My Health Record system, including connecting mobile applications, will be available to access My Health Record functionalities including some write transactions.
The following subset of write transactions to the My Health Record System will be disabled
· linking a MyGov account to My Health Record
linking a PRODA account to National Provider Portal resetting password and ULC linking via Admin Portal New Care Agency employee registration
· Notify Account Change (NAC) flow
Before the restricted write period ends, there will be a 30-minute outage for mobile applications. This outage will commence at 10:00pm – 10:30pm (AEDT) on Friday, 1st November 2019.
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Dr Karen Luxford is setting the standard in Australian health care
As the new CEO of the Australian Council on Healthcare Standards, Dr Karen Luxford shares how a greater demand for consumer-driven care is shaping the Australian healthcare sector.
Dr Karen Luxford is setting the standard in Australian health care
As the new CEO of the Australian Council on Healthcare Standards, Dr Karen Luxford shares how a greater demand for consumer-driven care is shaping the Australian healthcare sector.
Australia’s health system is one of the best in the world, and it’s a major reason why Australians enjoy one of the longest life expectancies in the world.
For more than 45 years, the
Australian Council on Healthcare Standard s (ACHS) has worked with governments, colleges, consumer groups and other bodies to set national benchmarks for safety and quality. Today, its standards are recognised and implemented worldwide.
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1 November 2019
How much is MedicalDirector worth this time around?
In the last month, one of our two largest GP-based patient management systems, MedicalDirector (MD), has been reported as being up for sale by it’s private equity owner, Affinity, and simultaneously launching itself with a fair bit of fanfare into the UK market.
The two announcements hardly seem coincidental. Affinity has owned MD for coming up to four years now and private equity firms like to sell within five years if they can. But MD’s core performance since it was acquired by Affinity has been plagued by a failure of its cloud-based product Helix to gain traction, and by aggressive and clever competition, which seems to have depleted its market share for its core desktop product.
So what might happen here, given a significant proportion of Australian GPs are MD customers and this looks like it could be a defining moment for the software group?
MD began it’s life as far back as 1993-4 in the study of a Bundaberg-based doctor, and part-time software coding enthusiast, Dr Frank Pyefinch, who was frustrated with the work involved in manually processing prescriptions.
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ACCC v Google - what you need to know now
It’s all over the news. The ACCC has instituted proceedings (
Google Proceedings ) in the Federal Court against Google LLC and Google Australia Pty Ltd (together,
Google ), alleging the tech giant engaged in misleading conduct and made false or misleading representations to consumers about the personal location data Google collects, keeps and uses.
The ACCC claims that from at least January 2017, Google breached the Australian Consumer Law when it made on-screen representations on Android mobile phones and tablets that the ACCC alleges misled consumers about the location data Google collected or used when certain Google Account settings were enabled or disabled.
‘We are taking court action against Google because we allege that as a result of these on-screen representations Google has collected, kept and used highly sensitive and valuable personal information about consumers’ location without them making an informed choice,’ ACCC chair Rod Sims said.
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Govt unlikely to meet 2020 digital records target
Auditor finds poor management has stunted agency efforts.
The federal government is unlikely to meet the digital records and information management targets in its principal Digital Continuity 2020 policy by next year, the national auditor has found.
The Australian National Audit Office has also labelled efforts by the National Archives of Australia (NAA) to police the policy as “largely ineffective” due to poor management.
The government-wide policy was introduced in October 2015 to digitise agency processes, in line with the government’s broader e-government and the digital economy objectives.
It mandated that agencies shift to entirely digital work processes, interoperable systems and improved information governance arrangements by 31 December 2020.
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Denham Sadler
October 30, 2019
Tech's push for a Bill of Rights
Australian governments should
After parliamentary committee resoundingly rejected the Coalition’s plans to launch a nationwide facial recognition system, government ministers have lined up to recommit to the legislation, while taking into account a push for further privacy safeguards and transparency.
But while welcoming the committee’s surprise move to send the legislation back to the drawing board, civil and digital rights advocates want any new powers to be put on hold until Australia has its own charter of human rights.
The Human Rights Legal Centre is currently developing its own draft framework for such a charter, and is set to launch a large-scale national campaign for it in the coming months.
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Face scans floated for online porn, wagering
· 7:47PM October 30, 2019
Australians may have to have their faces scanned before they can watch pornography online or gamble, according to changes mooted by the federal government.
The idea comes from Australia's Department of Home Affairs, led by minister Peter Dutton, which floated the proposal in a submission to an inquiry into age verification for online pornography and online wagering.
The department suggested that its Face Verification Service, which takes a user's photo and compares it to identity documents like a passport or driver's licence, could be used to prevent underage children from watching porn or gambling.
“This could assist in age verification, for example by preventing a minor from using their parent’s driver's licence to circumvent age verification controls,” the submission said.
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Thursday, 31 October 2019 09:35
Indian nuclear power plant hit by Windows malware
An Indian nuclear power plant in the southern state of Tamil Nadu was hit by Windows malware in September, the Nuclear Power Corporation of India has acknowledged.
The Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project denied its control systems had been attacked. But government officials confirmed that an “incident” had occurred, though it did not affect the main operations of the plant.
There was speculation on social media that the malware in question was Dtrack, malware which the Russian company Kaspersky
detailed in September and attributed to the Lazarus group which is claimed to have North Korean affiliation.
According to Kaspersky, Dtrack was derived from ATMDtrack, the latter being malware developed to attack ATMs and first seen in Seoul in 2013.
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How political campaigns use geofencing to track you
· By Sam Schechner Emily Glazer
· The Wall Street Journal
· 12:00AM October 31, 2019
When US President Donald Trump took to the stage last month in Fayetteville, North Carolina, to support Republican candidate Dan Bishop in a special election, thousands of people showed up. Bishop was seeking their support. An outside Republican group was looking for something more. It wanted their data.
Unknown to the crowd, the Committee to Defend the President, a Republican political action committee that supports Trump, had hired a company to collect unique identification numbers from attendees’ smartphones that evening, based on location data those phones were sending to third parties. The goal was to target ads at people it could drive to the polls the next day. Bishop won by about 3800 votes.
The PAC now plans to use the technique, called geofencing, in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election in about half a dozen swing states to find people who may not be registered to vote, says its chairman, Ted Harvey.
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'Crosses a moral boundary': Chief Scientist warns against risks of artificial intelligence
October 31, 2019 — 9.00am
The nation's chief scientist has urged software developers on the cusp of artificial intelligence breakthroughs not to lose their "moral compass" amid fears humans will be treated as data points by our largest companies.
Alan Finkel, speaking at an artificial intelligence summit at Monash University in Melbourne on Thursday, said there was a "golden opportunity" for Australia to be a world leader in scientific discovery while also holding to the ideals of a virtuous society.
He said there was enormous potential for artificial intelligence to deliver substantial benefits to Australians in areas as varied as manufacturing and financial services.
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'Mass surveillance'? The facial recognition bill explained
Oct 31, 2019 — 12.00am
The Identity-matching Services Bill and the Passports Amendment Bill - were first introduced in 2018 but lapsed with this year's election. Sceptics saw plenty of reasons for concern in the proposed laws because they would have authorised facial recognition for "road safety activities", did not require warrants, and contained automated decision-making, ministerial discretion, and a risk of racial and religious profiling.
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Planning a baby? A fertility app won’t necessarily tell you the best time to try
October 31, 2019 5.51am AEDT
Authors
Postdoctoral research fellow, University of Adelaide
Professor of Reproductive and Periconceptual Medicine, The Robinson Institute, University of Adelaide
In years gone by, women would rely on the calendar on the wall to work out when their next menstrual cycle might occur. They would look to physical signs to tell them when they might be ovulating, and therefore when they’d be most likely to fall pregnant.
More recently, we’ve seen the proliferation of mobile phone applications helping women track their current cycle, predict their next cycle, and work out when the best time is to try for a baby.
The personalisation and convenience of apps makes them empowering and attractive. But they require some caution in their use.
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30 October 2019
Is derm tech worth the investment?
While some doctors are head-over-heels in love with the latest dermatology technology, many are still doing things by hand. In this feature, The Medical Republic
On 1 January 2008, Professor Cliff Rosendahl made a decision to photograph every mole he cut out. It was a painstaking task for a solo GP. “It took about an hour every night for the last 10 years,” the Queensland-based skin cancer doctor tells The Medical Republic.
“It involved downloading images from multiple cameras, put them on a holding file and put them on PowerPoints,” he said. Then, Professor Rosendahl would go through each image individually and document all the relevant clinical information.
While most GPs engage in fastidious record-keeping, the 20,000 lesions photodocumented by Professor Rosendahl are something else entirely.
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Published 29 Oct 2019
Digital health: The new frontier of healthcare
From drones that deliver blood in Rwanda, to blockchain health records in Estonia, it's clear the role of technologies such as AI and machine learning are swiftly transforming healthcare.
But how these systems and tools are being implemented varies greatly depending on the government, region and resources, and their success can depend on public perception.
Data privacy is a major concern for many people.
"The biggest companies in the world, they're in the business of monetising personal data."
Take, for example, the furore in Australia in 2018 over the government's introduction of the
My Health Record system , in which people had to opt out if they were unwilling to allow their health information to be shared by medical professionals.
"We've had a whole debate around My Health Record, and we had two million people who opted out," says Monash University Professor of Sociology Alan Petersen. "Why are they expressing concerns? Because they weren't consulted, and a lot of people are suspicious about the harvesting of their data.
Note: Author list is found at site
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You've turned off your location history. Now what?
Oct 31, 2019 — 12.00am
The crux of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission's case is the claim that Android users did not realise that a two-step process was needed to block Google from collecting location data from their devices. This involved disabling the "Location History" as well as a second setting called "Web and App Activity".
But experts warn that even if users turn off both these settings, their location can still be tracked and stored by Google, mobile service providers, and even other third-party entities.
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ACCC case against Google to shed light on how big tech works
· 12:56PM October 29, 2019
The consumer watchdog’s groundbreaking case against Google is the first step towards opening the adtech market controlled by the digital platforms Google and Facebook.
At first glance consumers may wonder what is the big deal if Google knows where they are or where they shop.
But what consumers might not know is how valuable that is to Google.
Google can sell that information to advertisers who can target you precisely and, in the process, give Google a stranglehold on digital advertising.
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How Google tracks your moves
· 3:03PM October 29, 2019
Google’s mass collection of user data goes to the very heart of its business model and is crucial to everything the tech giant does. Google and its parent company Alphabet make their money through highly-specific targeted advertising, tailored to your interests, your location and your most intimate information. Google has come a long way from its humble days as a search tool, and its old motto of “don’t be evil”. Its tentacles now extend to services like weather, traffic, news, shopping, and even a personal assistant in your ear, which all rely on your location as well as rich data about who you are in order to function.
In 1999, the company had a line in its privacy policy, that it “only talks about our users in aggregate, not as individuals.’ That line was removed three months later, and 20 years later is a stark reminder of just how different the Google of today is.
The vast bulk of Google’s revenue in 2019 comes from its proprietary advertising service, Google AdWords, which uses an algorithm to serve the most relevant results for your query, based on your personal information.
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Tiring of the tech titans
· By Paul Vigna
· The Wall Street Journal
· 6:53AM October 30, 2019
Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg said in a speech at Georgetown University in the US this month that his social media megacorp and its Big Tech peers “have decentralised power by putting it directly into people’s hands”.
That sounds comforting and egalitarian, but a lot of people worry these days that they’ve actually centralised power — around themselves. This has become ever more obvious since Russian agents used Facebook in an attempt to manipulate the US public in the 2016 presidential election. It’s clearer every time somebody searches or posts about dogs, only to find their feeds inundated with dog food ads.
Capitalising on the oceans of data produced by the web has turned Facebook and Alphabet’s Google into empires, but it hasn’t made the internet a more open place, says Christian Fuchs, a media professor at the University of Westminster in London.
“The internet is a corporate monopoly today,” he says, “and monopolies are always a danger to democracy.”
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Wednesday, 30 October 2019 11:14
Govt wants to know what you look like when watching porn
The Australian Government wants to know what you look like when you are watching porn online so that it can use its face verification system to deny access to those below the legal age (which in this case is 16).
This sounds like a crazy idea, but no, there it is,
in black and white , from the good people at the Department of Home Affairs in a submission to an inquiry by the Standing Committee on Legal Affairs and Social Policy.
Of course, as people are aware, one does not look the same at all stages of watching porn online (you get my meaning, I'm sure).
So how will photos from drivers' licences and passports help to identify someone trying to get his/her rocks off and promptly pin them down as being below the age of permission?
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ADHA COO defends My Health Record transparency
Bettina McMahon says people have not had this level of transparency before
29 October, 2019 18:29 ADHA Propaganda
The Australian Government’s My Health Record offers a level of transparency that people did not have before on health information and data.
That is according to the Australian Digital Health Agency (ADHA) chief operating officer Bettina McMahon who spoke at this year’s Gartner IT Symposium about her own experience using the system.
McMahon said that one of the settings allows a user to get a text message every time someone is checking their files, so while at a GP’s consultation, for example, she gets warnings of her records being checked or updated.
Answering a question about how the agency responds to citizen pressures to get an improved customer and patient experience, she said that this is the sort of transparency people have not had before. She said that this is one step and “we're going to end up going much further” as the govrernment explores boundaries, constraints and consumer expectations which change over time.
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Internet 50 years old today
On 29 October 1969 the first message was transmitted over ARPANET, the forerunner to the Internet. UCLA student programmer Charlie Kline used the University’s SDS Sigma 7 computer to login to an SDS 940 computer at Stanford Research Institute at Stanford University in Silicon Valley.
The message was ‘login’. Not quite up to the standard of Alexander Graham Bell’s “Mr Watson, come here. I want to see you” or Samuel Morse’s “What hath God wrought,” but a real word and a real message.
It was actually Kline’s second attempt. The first one dropped out after the first two letters, so you could argue that the first message on the Internet was actually “lo,” which is something to behold.
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Google Australia sued over collection and use of location data
ACCC claims consumers misled about how to disable tracking.
Google Australia is facing federal court action initiated by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission over the way it collects, stores and uses location data.
The ACCC alleged that Google had breached Australian consumer laws since “at least January 2017”.
At issue are “on-screen representations made on Android mobile phones and tablets about how location data is allegedly collected and used “when certain Google Account settings were enabled or disabled.”
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Tuesday, 29 October 2019 18:38
ACCC takes Google to court over location data collection
The Australian competition watchdog has taken search giant Google to the Federal Court over allegedly making false or misleading claims about the collection of personal location data.
In a statement, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission said it had sued both the American company Google and the local outfit, Google Australia, claiming that they had breached Australian Consumer Law between at least January 2017 until late 2018.
When consumers set up an Android mobile device, they were not properly told what settings they had to adjust in order to ensure that location data was not collected.
The case focuses on the settings Location History and Web & App Activity. Both had to be turned off to ensure location data was not collected.
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What's the fuss? Doctors should love patients consulting Dr Google
29th October 2019
It's difficult to imagine a world now without Google and the internet. It's also strange to think that most people alive right now received the bulk of their education in the pre-internet era.
I remember in the UK, where I went to medical school, Google only became a thing perhaps midway through university.
Since then, of course, the internet has exploded and penetrated every facet of our lives. And while we all know the many drawbacks of our current addiction to the online world, it’s difficult for anyone to say that it hasn’t been a net positive to society.
One of the most important ways we are now using the internet is to make informed health choices and read up around our illnesses. Unfortunately this hasn't always been met with enthusiasm by all members of the medical profession.
A very popular online meme that’s been circulated for years by frustrated doctors has been: "Don't confuse your Google search with my medical degree."
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Free sunscreen and skin checks? Health insurer seeks to reward 'good behaviour'
October 29, 2019 — 12.00am
Private health insurer NIB wants to increase incentives for "good behaviour" like exercising or being a non-smoker as it moves closer to predicting members' health risks by analysing their medical and claims history.
NIB is also looking at ways to address a "major pain point" for members - high out-of-pocket costs for some surgical procedures - and will on Tuesday announce it is trialling a new model for knee and hip replacement surgery.
The model guarantees no out-of-pocket costs aside from a member's hospital excess through agreements with select orthopaedic surgeons, anaesthetists and rehabilitation providers. If successful, the trial, in the NSW Hunter region, will be rolled out nationally and NIB will look to implement the model in other surgical specialities.
NIB chief executive Mark Fitzgibbon said the industry had to be more relevant to young people as increasing numbers dropped their coverage due to high premiums and a perceived lack of value. Insurers must be allowed to play a greater role in members' wellbeing, moving from "sick care" to "well care", so "the value proposition becomes meaningful".
NIB has been working on an algorithm that uses data from members' claims history and My Health Record profile to assess their health risks and tailor preventive care. For example, in the case of someone at risk of developing skin cancer, "we're going to send you to a dermatologist for free, give you the best skin-check app in the world and free sunblock every time you go to Chemist Warehouse or Priceline," Mr Fitzgibbon said.
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Australia introducing AI in healthcare
HIMSS is joining forces with the Australia Digital Health Agency (ADHA) to compose the up and coming HIMSS Australia Digital Health Summit (ADHS) from 20-21 November this year, occurring in Sydney, Australia. The gathering is relied upon to unite delegates from ADHA, open and private medicinal services pioneers from Australia, just as from the APAC region. The primary topic of the Summit is “Interoperability and Connected Care, which is particularly pertinent with the execution of My Health Record (MHR) in the nation, and on the web, the electronic rundown of one’s key wellbeing data. ADHA has been dynamically overhauling the MHR, for example, collaborating with programming merchants to have the option to share data securely crosswise over various programming items and improving its clinical work process abilities. The Data track will address the potential advantages of making a system of shared information crosswise over Australia and contextual investigations of how the utilization of information examination apparatuses can realize out better wellbeing results. One of the top worries in overseeing medicinal services information is cybersecurity – Richard Staying, Chief Security Strategist, CYLERA, will share his experience and insights. For the Innovation track, there will be a board session by Australian and global social insurance pioneers on the driving force behind development, just as a session on how human services associations can defeat their dread of advancement. Dr. Clair Sullivan, Chief Digital Health Officer for Metro North Hospital and Health Service in Australia, will share on a portion of the development extends that her association is chipping away at.
Note: Problematic English Alert!
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You can be your own doctor after 10 years.
In his opening remarks at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) AsiaPac18 gathering in Brisbane a year ago, eHealth Queensland CEO and CIO, Dr Richard Ashby discussed the changing situations between medicinal services suppliers and patients and how one can hope to see patients assuming responsibility for the administration of their own human services inside the following 10-15 years, generally empowered by their cell phones. On a similar occasion, a worldwide board of specialists talked about the progressions that need to come to guarantee human services frameworks that are supportable later on by using innovation to diminish pressure on assets.
Australian Digital Health Agency CEO Tim Kelsey exhorted that enabling patients to deal with their own human services was a significant advance and one that is being supported by Governments around the globe and unquestionably in Australia and the UK. He likewise showed that, much like the digitalization of the movement business, there will be a defining moment where shoppers move quickly from an at first wary way to deal with this better approach for wellbeing the executives to a lot more popularity for it.
To stay in front of the computerized bend, medicinal services suppliers need to get their ‘home’ altogether. This implies checking on their innovation prerequisites and where required taking a look at new correspondence stages that will empower them to progress to carefully improved associations with patients.
But what a number of medicinal services suppliers are prepared to exploit advanced advances to improve both patient-supplier correspondence and work environment efficiencies? Medical clinics are putting resources to quicken their computerized change.
Future-sealing benefits aside, medical clinics that are putting now in portable as a necessary bit of their computerized change activities are as of now encountering better patient commitment, decreases in didn’t visit (DNA) rates, improved profitability, and authoritative efficiencies.
Note: Problematic English Alert! (Promise no more!)
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Good policy needs good data. So why is it locked up?
Crunching official data could help us find out which policies are working. Potential embarrassment is the wrong reason for governments to keep it under wraps.
Robert Breunig and Warwick McKibbin
Oct 28, 2019 — 12.00am
As the engines of economic growth slow in Australia, there is a need for innovative policy changes to both raise economic growth but also to improve the well being of Australia more generally. Design of good policy depends on a solid foundation of good data.
A workshop at ANU convened by the Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis (CAMA), the Centre of Excellence in Population Aging Research (CEPAR) and the ANU Tax and Transfer Policy Institute explored this issue in great depth.
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28 October 2019
Telehealth ban restricts rural access to VAD
An amendment to the commonwealth criminal code is likely to have the unforeseen effect of reducing access to voluntary assisted dying for patients in Victoria, the only state where it is currently legal.
A panel discussion at GP19 in Adelaide on the practicalities of VAD revealed some lesser-known facts, difficulties and unfounded worries around the provision, which has been in place since June and which is expected to be used by around 150 people a year.
Facilitated by journalist Jenny Brockie, the panel comprised Justice Betty King QC, former Victorian Supreme Court judge and a member of the VAD review board; lawyer Michael Gorton; bioethicist Courtney Hempton; palliative care physician Liz Reymond; Dr Horst Herb, a rural locum GP with international experience; and Belinda Teh, a consumer representative from Perth whose mother died from metastatic breast cancer without access to assisted dying.
Justice King said worries about the law being misused by families were completely unfounded, going on the evidence from overseas, where the norm was for children to oppose their parents’ access to assisted dying.
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No-CPR Orders - A Detailed Look at Recent Legal Developments
The College of Physicians and Surgeons (the CPSO) recently amended its policy “Planning for and Providing Quality End-of-Life Care” in light of a decision of the Ontario Superior Court in a medical malpractice lawsuit.
In the case of Wawrzyniak v. Livingstone , the plaintiff, who was the substitute decision-maker (SDM) for her father, alleged her father’s physicians failed to meet an acceptable standard of care when they made the decision to write a do not resuscitate (DNR) order without her consent in September, 2008. In August, 2019, her lawsuit was dismissed and no appeal is being taken.
You may read the decision here .
Facts
Ms. W’s father, Douglas DeGuerre, age 88, had been transferred from long term care to acute care with multiple co-morbidities including diabetes, severe cardiac and respiratory disease, severe vascular ischemia, gangrene, multiple open necrotic lesions and end-stage renal disease. He was seen by vascular and orthopedic surgeons, neither of whom had any treatment to offer that would be of any benefit. He was admitted to internal medicine for supportive treatment of pain and multiorgan failure. His attending physician expected a slow decline toward death in spite of the treatments provided.
As usual, the Hospital [Sunnybrook] had a policy by which a standing order existed to initiate CPR in case of cardiac or respiratory arrest, unless a specific instruction was given to the contrary. There were several discussions with Ms. W, who was insistent that her father be deemed “full code” and refused palliative care. On day seven of his admission, Mr. DeGuerre underwent bilateral amputation of his lower limbs for the purpose of pain management, spent a few days in the ICU post-operatively, was stabilized and transferred back to the medical ward with daily follow-up from the rapid response team.
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Digital ID laws needed before bank, state govt buy-in: DTA
Decentralised identity model can't progress without.
The Digital Transformation Agency says the federal government will need to enshrine it's much-prized digital identity scheme GovPass in law before banks and state and territory governments can sign up.
DTA chief digital officer Peter Alexander told a senate estimates hearing last week that such legislation was necessary to formalise the standards that govern the national federated identity model under the
trusted digital identity framework (TDIF) .
“The main reason for that legislation requirement is as this system becomes national, for state and territory government to operate within it, but more importantly the private sector, there is a requirement for some legislation to govern the TDIF,” he said.
“We can apply a policy framework without legislation which federal government agencies need to use.
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How the world can avoid the great 5G divide
Christopher Findlay
Updated Oct 27, 2019 — 5.05pm, first published at 5.03pm
Fifth-generation (5G) mobile network technology offers higher speeds and greater capacity, critical for cutting-edge technologies such as autonomous vehicles and applications of virtual reality.
The development of 5G is also expected to drive innovation towards many things not yet imagined.
Chinese technology company Huawei is an industry leader because of its research and development spending. Its competitive pricing, leading technology and global standards have helped it carve out a large market share in the components required for 5G telecommunications networks.
Western policymakers, however, are reluctant to use the company because they believe it poses a cyber intrusion risk.
The United States has banned sales of US technology to Huawei, with some exemptions. It is also developing regulations for an executive order to secure the ICT supply chain, and this is expected to impede Huawei sales to US networks.
Urged by the US to take a similar tough line, Australia has effectively banned Huawei from participation in 5G.
Other countries are considering different options.
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Comments more than welcome!
David.
