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This weekly blog is to explore the news around the larger issues
around Digital Health, data security, data privacy, AI / ML. technology, social
media and related matters.
I will also try to highlight ADHA
Propaganda when I come upon it.
Just so we keep count, the latest Notes from the ADHA Board are still
dated 6 December, 2018! How pathetic is that for transparency? Secrecy
unconstrained!
Note: Appearance here is not to suggest I see any credibility or
value in what follows. I will leave it to the reader to decide what is
worthwhile and what is not! The point is to let people know what is being said
/ published that I have come upon.
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Australian coronavirus contact tracing app voluntary and with 'no hidden agenda', minister says
Stuart Robert
says people can be assured there will be no geolocation, surveillance or tracking
Sat 18 Apr
2020 16.01 AEST Last modified on Sat 18 Apr 2020 16.02 AEST
The
Covid trace app is “entirely voluntary”, will not be a surveillance device and
is designed to speed up coronavirus testing, the government services minister,
Stuart Robert, has said.
“It
is a big team Australia moment,” he said. “When this app is released in the
next week or two we really need every Australian to download it and to run it,
so that if indeed your family, you, come into contact with somebody with the
virus, you can rest assured that health officials will rapidly contact you and
seek to provide the best care possible to you.”
Robert
said when the pandemic was over the app could be deleted and the data would not
be retained.
The
app has been delayed after privacy law monitors including the Human Rights Law
Centre told the health minister, Greg Hunt, in a letter they
were worried about the types of data to be collected by the app.
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Coronavirus: ‘Monumental’ task to hit target for tracking app
The government could struggle to meet one of its key targets for relaxing
social-distancing restrictions and reigniting the economy, with modelling
showing that countries that had rolled out similar virus-tracking apps reached
take-up rates by the public of no more than 25 per cent.
The modelling also warns that a prolonged delay to easing restrictions
in Australia could lead to a rolling $40bn hit to the economy for every month
they remain in place after May.
Scott Morrison on Friday implored Australians to download the
COVID-19 contact-tracing app when it became available — as early as next week —
claiming it was a matter of “national service” that could save lives and would
be key to lifting restrictions.
The modelling of 17 countries to have already rolled out similar
apps, conducted by leading global consultant Kearney, showed the most any
country — including pioneer nations such as Singapore and Israel — had managed
to achieve was 20-25 per cent take-up among smartphone users.
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By Jonny Evans,
Computerworld | 14 April 2020 0:29 AEST
Everything we know about the Google/Apple COVID-19 contact tracing tech
Here's how it works, what it does, why it matters and links to further information.
Creeping
erosion of privacy? Desperately needed technology-based solution to a global
life-or-death problem? A little of both? Here is what we think we know now
about the Apple/Google contact tracing technology announced
on Friday.
What has happened?
Apple
and Google are working together to develop COVID-19
contact tracing technology for both Android and iOS devices.
“All
of us at Apple and Google believe there has never been a more important moment
to work together to solve one of the world’s most pressing problems,” the
companies said in a statement announcing the move.
The
two giant corporations have published draft technical documentation, including
Bluetooth and cryptography specifications and framework documentation.
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Apple, Google technology a safer bet for Canberra's COVID-19 app
By Tim Biggs
April 17, 2020 — 3.15pm
Experts
have urged the Australian government to deploy the tracking technology jointly
developed by Apple and Google for its COVID-19 contact tracing app, instead of
copying a model used in Singapore.
Contact
tracing involves identifying and following up with people who may have come in
contact with an infectious disease. New
digital solutions aim to do this by exchanging beacons between
phones when two people are close together, via Bluetooth.
The
federal government has confirmed that its forthcoming app will be based on
Singapore’s TraceTogether, which has been criticised over its need to be open
and active on a user's phone to work. Solutions in other countries have
involved storing tracing data and user phone numbers on central databases,
prompting concerns from security and privacy advocates.
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Scott Morrison rules out making virus tracing app mandatory
April 18, 2020 — 11.27am
Prime
Minister Scott Morrison says the coronavirus contact tracing app being
developed will not be made mandatory and the government will seek to convince
Australians to have their movements logged.
The
government had indicated the phone app to strengthen the nation's COVID-19
testing and tracing system would be voluntary initially but left the door open
to a mandatory rollout at some point.
Mr
Morrison ruled out the coercive approach on Saturday, declaring: "The app
we are working on to help our health workers trace people who have been in
contact with coronavirus will not be mandatory."
He
said the government would be "seeking the cooperation and support of
Australians to download the app to help our health workers, to protect our
community and help get our economy going again".
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Scott Morrison Is Now Saying Australia's Coronvirus Tracing App Won't Be Mandatory
Apr 18, 2020,
11:00am
This
week the government announced its upcoming COVID-19 contact tracing app. Not a
lot is publicly known about it yet, which has led to some
privacy concerns.
On
Friday Prime Minister Scott Morrison didn't rule the possibility of making it
mandatory when asked about it during an interview. Now he has taken to Twitter
to change this stance.
Update:
On Saturday April 18 Scott Morrison stated on Twitter that the COVID-19 tracing
app that the government is working on will not be mandatory for Australians:
"We
will be seeking the cooperation and support of Australians to download the app
to help our health workers, to protect our community and help get our economy
going again," said Morrison is a follow up tweet.
You
can read our original report from April 18 below.
The
prime minister appeared
on Triple M this morning and was asked whether the contact tracing
app and travelling with a phone would become mandatory for Australians.
While
the prime minister stressed that this is not something he would want to see
happen, he didn't deny the possibility. He referred to the app as an act of
national service, likening it to buying war bonds back during WWII.
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The social network for the pandemic
The videoconferencing app has kept the world connected during
the pandemic, but its founder Eric Yuan never set out to create the world's
social fabric.
Drake Bennett and Nico Grant
Apr 16, 2020
– 5.01pm
Like
the rest of us, Eric Yuan is taking things day by day right now. The founder
and chief executive officer of teleconferencing
software company Zoom gets up each morning, after three or four
hours’ sleep, and nervously checks the previous day’s capacity numbers to make
sure the servers aren’t overwhelmed by traffic. Then he begins the long slog of
videoconference calls from his home in San Francisco's Bay Area. “It’s too many
Zoom meetings,” he says, via Zoom. “I hate that.”
Along
with the crush of new users and the challenge of running a business during a
pandemic, there’s the deluge of negative news stories, the letter from the New
York state attorney general, complaints from Democratic senators, and class
actions filed on behalf of consumers and shareholders –all accusing Zoom of
mishandling or abusing user data while allowing hackers to run amok.
It’s
not helping that, with school and college cancelled, Yuan’s three kids are at
home clogging up the Wi-Fi. The other night he got an email from a mother about
a troll who invaded her kid’s Zoom virtual classroom and showed inappropriate
content. Afterward, he couldn’t fall asleep.
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Digital health tools for COVID 19 and beyond – improving care coordination
This
webinar will examine ways in which new and existing digital health technologies
can be utilised to improve continuity of care for your patients during times of
social distancing and remote consultations. There will be a focus on Electronic
Prescribing and the ways in which My Health Record can help support telehealth
consults and remote dispensing. It will also include some of the simple things
you can do to protect your business from cyber risks which new telehealth
platforms might pose.
When
6:30pm - 7:30pm,
Tuesday 21st April 2020
6:30pm - 7:30pm,
Tuesday 21st April 2020
Where
Webinar ADHA Propaganda
Webinar ADHA Propaganda
CPD
Points Available?
No
No
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Coronavirus: New Zealand considering $100m contact tracing ‘CovidCard'
The
Government is considering handing out a Bluetooth-enabled CovidCard to every
New Zealander to aid with contact tracing efforts.
A private sector proposal to
produce and distribute five million Bluetooth-enabled credit card-sized contact
tracing tools at a cost of $100 million is one of "a wide variety of
technological solutions to contact tracing", a spokesperson for the
All of Government Covid-19
response team has confirmed.
The idea, branded CovidCard, is
one of a handful that the Government is considering as it moves to settle on a
digital solution for contact tracing.
Newsroom
understands that the lead candidate remains a Ministry of Health-developed
version of Singapore's TraceTogether app, but flaws in the rollout and
operation of the smartphone app in Singapore have led to the CovidCard as a
potential alternative.
An April 12 presentation obtained
by Newsroom
was presented to GCSB and NZSIS Minister Andrew Little and Communications
Minister Kris Faafoi. It makes the case for the project, saying it solves
issues of compatibility, public trust and security and privacy, all of which
could be present in a TraceTogether-style solution.
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EU wants voluntary, privacy-based virus-tracking mobile apps
By Foo Yun Chee on
Apr 17, 2020 11:30AM
Contract tracing takes shape.
Mobile
apps used by EU countries to help contain the spread of the coronavirus should
comply with the bloc's privacy rules and seek people's consent to use personal
data, but exclude location data, the European Commission said on Thursday.
The
EU executive's recommendations are part of a unified European approach for
using technology to combat COVID-19 and come after several EU countries rolled
out a variety of apps, prompting criticism from data privacy activists.
"Strong
privacy safeguards are a pre-requisite for the uptake of these apps, and
therefore their usefulness," European digital chief Thierry Breton said in
a statement.
The
Commission said the mobile apps should be approved by public health
authorities, installed voluntarily and deleted once they are not needed.
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'Digital divide': lower income households struggle with internet access
April 17, 2020 — 12.01am
Disadvantaged
NSW residents are likely to face greater difficulty working from home or
completing schooling remotely during the pandemic, with research showing many
lower income households were already struggling with phone and internet access.
This
"digital divide" is highlighted in a report published by the NSW
Council of Social Services (NCOSS), which surveyed 730 people living in low-to
middle-income households in NSW.
The
National Cabinet has agreed on some guiding principles for schools to re-open
across the country.
Almost
15 per cent of those surveyed said they had to go without internet or voice
calls in the past 12 months because they could not afford to pay their mobile
phone bill.
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Will the public trust a COVID tracking app?
16 April, 2020
The
government is developing an app that will track COVID-19 contact.
Privacy
concerns have been raised about the government’s plan to develop a COVID-19
tracking app that will identify people who may have been exposed to
coronavirus.
Full
details of the technology are yet to be revealed but experts believe it is
likely to use Bluetooth and location data.
The
Prime Minister Scott Morrison says the app will be modelled on Singapore’s
TraceTogether app, and will “massively help” health authorities trace if people
have been in contact with someone with the virus.
Mr
Morrison says although no one will be forced to sign up, around 40 per cent of
the population will have to download it for it to work.
Public
trust essential
Professor
of communications and media at Monash University Mark Andrejevic says apps like
TraceTogether can be an effective part of the tracking system and he
understands the government’s interest in developing and implementing the
technology. But to do so it will have to win public confidence.
The
My Health Record experience has already shown public reservations about
entrusting personal data to the government, he says.
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Coronavirus: Voluntary tracking app a ‘sacrifice on the path to normality’, says Scott Morrison
Scott Morrison says a voluntary COVID-19 tracking app may be a
sacrifice the nation needs to stop the spread of the coronavirus and put the
country on a path back to normality.
The Prime Minister said on Wednesday that Australians would not be
forced to sign up for the soon-to-be-released app, but he expected significant
uptake because people were eager for the economy to open up again as quickly as
possible.
“You wouldn’t be mandatorily required to sign up to these apps;
that’s not how Australia works,” Mr Morrison said. “(But) if people believed
and understood that if we could trace people's contacts quicker, and tracked
down the coronavirus faster and saved people's lives … we could open our
economy up more.”
He said at least 40 per cent of Australians would need to download
and sign up for the app, modelled on a tool developed by the Singaporean
government, to successfully help authorities trace COVID-19.
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Hackers ‘capitalising on COVID’
Hackers are trying to capitalise on the COVID-19 pandemic in
increasing numbers and companies need to increase their vigilance, according to
Cisco Australia and New Zealand's boss Ken Boal.
Speaking to The Australian, Mr Boal said Cisco has never been so
busy with security, grappling with a record level of cyber threats locally as
the Australian economy shifts en masse to working from home.
"Who would have ever envisaged the level of remote work going
on," he said. "Most organisations, especially with knowledge workers
and office workers, have made the shift. It's creating a honey pot, a massive
platform for bad actors to take advantage of."
According to Mr Boal, Cisco's threat research team is also seeing
a global rise in COVID-19 themed attacks, which are not using new techniques
but are instead themed specifically around the coronavirus.
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Government needs public trust to make virus tracking app a success
By Emma Koehn
April 15, 2020 — 5.08pm
Cyber
security and public health experts warn the federal government's coronavirus
tracking app won't be effective unless it can convince a large section of the
public to sign up to it.
The
government wants 40 per cent of Australians to voluntarily sign up for the app
in order to track COVID-19 outbreaks.
"I
think it will be beneficial, but the degree of benefit is going to increase
with the degree of people using it," associate professor at the University
of New South Wales school of public health and community medicine, Dr James
Wood said.
"There
will have to be pretty clear messaging about what is being provided, and how
that data will be used."
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Electronic prescribing
Electronic
prescribing provides an option for prescribers and their patients to use an
electronic Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) prescription. Paper
prescriptions will still be available.
On this page
·
Contacts
About electronic prescribing
Electronic
prescribing allows prescribers and their patients to use an electronic
Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) prescription. It forms part of an Australian
Government budget measure to improve PBS efficiency.
Electronic
prescribing will not fundamentally change existing prescribing and dispensing
processes. Patients can still choose which pharmacy they attend to fill their
prescription.
Electronic
prescriptions form part of the broader digital health and medicines safety
framework. They enable the prescribing, dispensing and claiming of
medicines, without the need for a paper prescription.
Prescribers
and patients can choose an electronic prescription as an alternative to a paper
prescription. Paper prescriptions will still exist.
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Electronic Prescriptions
ADHA Propaganda
Changes
have been made to Commonwealth legislation to recognise an electronic
prescription as a legal form to allow medicine supply. This provides
prescribers and patients with an alternative to paper prescriptions. Paper
prescriptions will still be available.
Electronic
prescribing will not fundamentally change existing prescribing and dispensing
processes. It provides patients with greater choice and patients can still
choose which pharmacy they attend to fill their prescription.
Under
the Australian Government’s National Health Plan for COVID-19, electronic
prescriptions are now being fast-tracked to support telehealth and allow
patients to receive vital healthcare services while maintaining physical
distancing and, where necessary, isolation.
A
significant amount of work has already been done to ensure that necessary
upgrades to both pharmacy and prescriber software can be done quickly and
electronic prescriptions are expected to be available from the end of May.
Electronic
prescriptions are an alternative to paper prescriptions which will allow people
convenient access to their medicines and will lessen the risk of infection
being spread in general practice waiting rooms and at community pharmacies.
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Dr Andrew Rochford spruiks benefits of ‘secure’ digital health platform in government campaign
April 15,
2020 11:13
The
Australian Digital Health Agency is promoting its digital health platform to
the public, saying Australia’s need for a connected healthcare system is “now
greater than ever”.
The
campaign assures consumers the platform is “accessible, progressive, and,
importantly, secure”.
The
campaign, created by DDB Remedy, is fronted by media and medical personality,
Dr Andrew Rochford, who has worked on telehealth projects in India and
Indonesia.
The
Australian Digital Health Agency’s goal is to improve health outcomes for
Australians through the integration of technology into the healthcare system,
it said.
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AFP admits to trialling controversial facial recognition tool Clearview AI
By Justin Hendry on
Apr 15, 2020 11:26AM
After initially denying usage.
The
Australian Federal Police has admitted to briefly trialling the controversial
facial recognition tool Clearview AI after initially denying that it had used
the software.
A
“limited pilot” of the tool by the AFP-led Australian Centre to Counter Child
Exploitation (ACCCE) was confirmed by the force in answers to questions on
notice released on Tuesday.
It
had previously denied using the platform, including after BuzzFeed
News revealed it as one
of 2200 law enforcement agencies globally that had used the platform.
This
was despite leaked records showing that employees had run more than 100
searches using the tool, which is capable of matching images with billions of
others scraped from the internet.
The
AFP said it used a free trial of the tool between 2 November 2019 and 22
January 2020 to ascertain the suitability of the system for use in child
exploitation investigations.
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Coronavirus contact-tracing app to help set us free
A new tracking app is likely to be available in Australia within
weeks, offering faster tracing of COVID-19 contacts and a potential early
release from economically crippling social restrictions.
Development of the opt-in mobile phone app, based on one used in
Singapore, is being led by the nation’s Digital Transformation Agency with the
backing of Scott Morrison and input from Attorney-General Christian Porter.
The Australian can also reveal the nation’s top telcos – Telstra,
Optus and Vodafone – have contacted the government offering to boost
contact-tracing capabilities using metadata they collect under national
security legislation. It is understood the Home Affairs Department was
initially involved in the app project, but the task was handed to the DTA –
under Government Services Minister Stuart Robert – after the agency’s success
in delivering a WhatsApp coronavirus information service with software company
Atlassian.
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Friday, 10 April 2020 08:24
Google told to pay French news publishers for content: report
Search
giant Google has agreed to comply with a French ruling that it must pay
publishing companies and news agencies for re-using content they produce, a
report says.
France's
Autorite de la Concurrence (French Competition Authority) said on Thursday:
“Google’s practices caused a serious and immediate harm to the press sector,
while the economic situation of publishers and news agencies is otherwise
fragile."
The
decision was made after a complaint by unions who represent French publishers,
the news agency Reuters
reported. In 2019, Google had
agreed that its search results would not display news clips from European
publishers to French users in keeping with a new copyright regulation.
But
this was not deemed sufficient by the French organisations who then made their
complaint, resulting in Thursday's preliminary ruling. A more detailed ruling
is expected later.
Australia
has made moves to regulate digital platforms, and is now in the process of formulating a voluntary code
for co-operation between digital platforms and news organisations.
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Technology delivers social distancing for healthcare in fight against COVID-19
13
April 2020 ADHA Propaganda
After the important role My Health Record has played in
large scale crises such as the Queensland floods and the recent bushfires,
where pharmacists and hospital staff have relied on information in the My
Health Record to provide care, the development of other technology
such as telehealth and electronic prescribing (EP) is poised to further help
Australians during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Under
the Australian Government’s National Health Plan for COVID-19, electronic
prescriptions are now being fast-tracked to allow patients to receive vital
healthcare services while maintaining physical distancing and, where necessary,
isolation. The solution will see a unique QR barcode 'token' sent via an app,
SMS or email to the patient, allowing them convenient access to their medicines
while lessening the risk of infection being spread in general practices and
community pharmacies.
Read
the media release here.
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Our phones will get us back to work faster
As the fourth most connected smartphone country in the world,
Australia is an ideal place to institute contact tracing and be the testing
ground for the fruits of the partnership between Apple and Google.
Apr 13,
2020 – 12.03pm
Technology holds the key to Australia being able to end the coronavirus lock down as
quickly as possible and get the economy back up and running.
We should copy the best solutions adopted in democratic countries
that have been the most effective at limiting the impact of the virus - South
Korea, Singapore and Taiwan.
Countries that have not used geo-analytics in response to the
crisis have suffered far more damage to their economies, according to
compelling evidence compiled by consulting firm Kearney.
It measured activity in different economies before and after the
virus hit to gauge the impact. It used Google data to measure economic activity
in four sectors: retail and recreation, grocery and pharmacy, workplace and
residential.
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Coronavirus: Huge rise cases of in online abuse and bullying
More time online at home is bringing out the worst in some
Australians, with reports of cyber abuse up by 50 per cent since social-distancing
measures were introduced last month, federal Communications Minister Paul
Fletcher has revealed.
New figures from the office of the eSafety Commissioner reveal the
significant spike in complaints of adults abusing each other online, which sit
alongside increased reports of cyber bullying of children, up 21 per cent, and
image-based abuse, up 86 per cent.
Behind the numbers are some disturbing cases, including reports of
online pile-ons against people being shamed and harassed for allegedly being
caught on video breaching coronavirus social-distancing rules, with no context
to the footage.
Another significant concern is reports of children attending
school at home via online platforms such as Zoom being bullied by other
students about their living conditions, which are revealed in the background
of the video stream.
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Big tech must pay media: Paul Fletcher
Communications Minister Paul Fletcher says a decision by France’s
competition regulator to order Google to negotiate with publishers for their
content is the right one, and says he’s confident the tech giants will pay
publishers in Australia.
“The fact that the French competition regulator is going through a
similar process just tends to underline the importance, from a competition
perspective, that the digital platforms properly pay for content that’s been
generated by media companies that costs money to produce,” Mr Fletcher said.
“As the ACCC said in their final report, the social media
platforms are unavoidable commercial partners for the big media businesses, and
there needs to be a way for there to be fair payment.”
News Corp executive Michael Miller and more recently ACCC chairman
Rod Sims say they’re sceptical the tech giants have been acting in good faith
during ongoing negotiations with publishers, and Mr Fletcher said it was the
government’s expectation that the tech giants would play ball.
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Living in testing times
Politicians must keep voters in the loop about our great escape.
April 13, 2020
The next stage in managing the COVID-19 pandemic here and overseas
is identifying the profile and location of risk groups in our community who
could trigger the anticipated deadly second wave.
By doing that, those among us who are not at risk can get back to
work, without having to worry about getting fined for chewing on a kebab,
teaching the kids to drive or buying a pot plant from Bunnings.
Any government that thinks voters are going to put up with this
sort of enforcement overreach in the longer term needs to get out more.
Literally.
We know from our early profiling that our first wave of casualties
and carriers was dominated by our inner-urban wealthy elites, regular visitors
to western Europe and the ski fields of Japan and the US, along with highly
mobile 20-something students living in higher-density urban areas, and
backpackers.
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Comments more
than welcome!
David.
