Here are a few I have come across the last week or so. Note: Each link is followed by a title and a few paragraphs. For the full article click on the link above title of the article. Note also that full access to some links may require site registration or subscription payment.
General Comment
-----
Most of the news this week seems to be around the update of the COVIDSafe app to be more reliable and the compulsory use of the Aust. Immunisation Register with $6,600 fines for non compliance after you have vaccinated someone. $50 would be more reasonable IMVHO!
Cyber also got a good run…..
-----
COVIDSafe app to get overhaul to capture all close contacts
Tom Burton Government editor
Nov 29, 2020 – 10.00pm
The Morrison government's COVIDSafe app is to be overhauled to capture 100 per cent of close contacts of infected people who have the app.
The expected large improvement in detecting close contacts comes as the federal government is also preparing a new pre-Christmas campaign to promote good infection hygiene behaviour.
This follows concerns by authorities that Australia's near elimination of the spread of the virus could result in an outbreak of unsafe behaviour that has driven large surges in COVID-19 infection in the US and Europe.
Health Minister Greg Hunt wants the campaign to be a reminder about community complacency, as Apple mobility data show a return to above normal driving activity.
-----
COVIDSafe app overhauled before Christmas ad campaign
By Rob Harris
November 30, 2020 — 10.32am
The COVIDSafe app, downloaded by more than seven million times at the height of the pandemic, has been overhauled by the Morrison government before a new Christmas advertising campaign to warn Australia against relaxing social distancing measures.
The app has been criticised for software glitches which undermined its effectiveness, particularly on Apple iPhones, with Victoria abandoning its use at the height of the second wave because it had not been integrated properly into its contact tracing process.
Government Service Minister Stuart Robert announced on Monday the app would now incorporate a new Bluetooth protocol called Herald to improve performance and better contribute to the identification of potential close contacts.
The $2 million app was built to help assist state and territory contact-tracing teams uncover close contacts of infected COVID-19 cases who may have been within 1.5 metres of them for more than 15 minutes in public places such as restaurants, cafes or shops.
-----
DTA updates COVIDSafe Bluetooth protocol to fix iOS performance
By Justin Hendry on Nov 30, 2020 1:09PM
The government’s COVIDSafe contact tracing app will be updated with a new Bluetooth protocol that promises "near 100 percent" encounter logging on both iOS and Android devices.
The Digital Transformation Agency is set to incorporate the open source protocol, Herald, into the app within days in preparation for the busy Christmas period.
It follows months of collaboration with Apple and Google to improve COVIDSafe’s Bluetooth performance, which has proved problematic when running in the background on iOS.
The Herald protocol, which was developed by VMware researchers, improves encounter logging detection, as well as the frequency of detection, for better identification of potential close contacts.
-----
Monday, 30 November 2020 10:28
Govt says COVIDSafe app being updated as restrictions ease
Undeterred by the failure of its COVIDSafe app, the Morrison Government has announced that it will update the software in what it claims is "a world-leading technology development".
A statement from Health Minister Greg Hunt and Government Services Minister Stuart Robert said there would also be a new government advertising campaign to remind Australians "that as we head into Christmas and restrictions are easing, people should maintain COVID-safe behaviours".
The app, which was initially released for download on 27 April, detected only 17 cases. With about $70 million of taxpayers' money spent on its development, that worked out to approximately $4.12 million for each detection.
Additionally, as iTWire reported, six intelligence agencies — the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, the Australian Signals Directorate. the Australian Geospatial-Intelligence Organisation, the Defence Intelligence Organisation and the Office of National Intelligence — were found to have "incidentally" collected data from the app.
-----
23 Nov 2020
CALD Assist app simplifies COVID-19 screening for non-English speaking communities
A free mobile app developed by Western Health in Victoria and Australia’s national science agency CSIRO will help support vital COVID-19 screening efforts with patients from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds.
The CALD Assist app was initially developed in 2017 to support communication between CALD patients and healthcare workers including nurses, dietitians, speech pathologists, podiatrists, physiotherapists and occupational therapists. The Victorian Government contributed $454,000 to the development of the app.
CALD Assist features more than 200 commonly used phrases translated into 10 languages: Arabic, Cantonese, Croatian, Greek, Italian, Macedonian, Mandarin, Serbian, Spanish and Vietnamese – supported by images, video and pre-recorded audio.
A new update to the app allows non-English speakers to be asked COVID-19 screening questions, where interpreters are unavailable, and is designed for use by all health professionals involved with COVID-19 screening, including doctors.
-----
Monday, 30 November 2020 10:43
Australia’s cyber security spending soaring to $7.6 bilion by 2024
This year alone, Australians spent approximately $5.6 billion on cyber security from both local and international providers, with spending expected to increase to $7.6 billion by 2024, according to a new report.
In the 2020 Update of its Australia’s Cyber Security Competitiveness Plan (SCP) the industry-led not for profit responsible for the Cyber Security Growth Centre, AustCyber, says that cyber security continues to be one of the most rapidly expanding sectors worldwide, with global spending on cyber security products and services increasing by 30% from 2017 to 2020.
Austcyber says that while the pandemic is having an economic impact on Australia’s cyber security providers, it has accelerated digitisation trends and driven unprecedented domestic demand for cyber security.
“Trust in digital infrastructures and the data they carry is the mainstay of recovery from the pandemic – but also the means to drive productivity and effective diversification of the economy’s base.”
-----
Government's cut-price cyber defence leaves departments open to attack
John Davidson Columnist
Nov 30, 2020 – 2.26pm
Australian government departments are dramatically under-investing in their own cyber security, to the point where they could be making themselves easy targets for criminal and state-based hackers, a report has found.
Compared to private enterprise, government departments are investing less than half the money per employee on securing their technology and data, and would do well to "clean up their own house" before they start imposing tough new cyber-security requirements on the private sector, the report's author said.
The report, based on a survey of many of Australia's top Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) and Chief Technology Officers (CTOs), found that government departments were spending an average of $1388 per employee on cyber security, compared to an average spend of $2799 across all sectors including government.
The financial services sector was the top-spending industry, averaging $3038 per employee, the CISO Lens Benchmark 2020 report found.
-----
Accessing test results is no longer a problem for private pathology patients in Victoria and South Australia
People in Victoria and South Australia now have the option of choosing a private pathology provider that will securely upload their reports to their My Health Record so they can be accessed whenever needed.
Dr Andrew Carter, pathologist and Chief Medical Officer for SDS Pathology said that reports are now uploaded to patients’ My Health Records when they have a test at a Dorevitch Pathology Collection Centre in Victoria, the Albury Region of New South Wales, and an Abbott Pathology Collection Centre in South Australia. Tests conducted by Genomic Diagnostics on behalf of Dorevitch and Abbott will also be uploaded.
“Over the coming month tests conducted for hospital patients by Dorevitch Pathology will be uploaded to My Health Record. Patients can also bring in a request form and we will share their reports with My Health Record”, he said.
There are 460 Dorevitch Pathology collection centres in Victoria and southern NSW and 30 Abbott Pathology collection centres in South Australia.
-----
NSW Pathology to deploy PixCell’s HemoScreen devices for point-of-care testing
Dean Koh | 02 Dec 2020
PixCell Medical, maker of a rapid diagnostic product, announced that NSW Pathology, the provider of public pathology services for the New South Wales (NSW) government, will deploy PixCell’s HemoScreen hematology analyzer for rapid, lab-accurate Complete Blood Count (CBC) testing, accessible at the point of care.
PixCell has worked closely with NSW Health Pathology over the past year to evaluate the HemoScreen and the public pathology service provider is ready to implement the point-of-care testing (POCT) tech in facilities across the state.
WHAT’S IT ABOUT
HemoScreen will enable true POCT in terms of operation, electronic result delivery through an Internet of Things approach, ease-of-use, and transportability, while still providing core lab quality results. Outside of Sweden and Denmark, Australia will be the first country to get HemoScreen devices, which will soon be implemented throughout NSW.
-----
New standards for safe and effective digital mental health care
Monday, 30 November, 2020
The introduction of world-leading standards for digital mental health services in Australia is set to be a game changer for the nation at a time when the delivery of high-quality mental health care has never been more important.
The announcement of new National Safety and Quality Digital Mental Health (NSQDMH) Standards by the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care (the Commission) has been embraced by the mental health sector and consumer and carer advocates.
Encompassing mental health, suicide prevention and alcohol and other drug services, the NSQDMH Standards will support the delivery of high-quality and safe care including counselling, treatment and peer-to-peer support services via telephone, videoconferencing, websites, SMS, webchat and mobile apps.
With one in five adults1 and one in seven adolescents2 experiencing a common mental health disorder each year in Australia — combined with unprecedented demand for digital delivery of mental health services this year — there are tangible benefits in being able to access safe and effective care on digital platforms.
-----
https://digitalhealth.org.au/blog/bettina-mcmahon-is-the-new-chair-of-aidh/
30 November, 2020
Bettina McMahon is the new Chair of AIDH
The Institute has welcomed leading digital health executive and Fellow of the Institute Bettina McMahon into the role of Board Chair.
Bettina is well known to most of the digital health community as the face of the Australian Digital Health Agency while interim chief executive and before that as the Chief Operating Officer.
Bettina is the second Chair of the Institute, following the departure of Michael Walsh. Michael had led the Institute since its launch in February 2020 after the merger of the Health Informatics Society of Australia and the Australasian College of Health Informatics.
Vice Chairs Dr David Hansen and Angela Ryan thanked Michael for his leadership during the foundational year of the Institute, saying the Institute was strategically positioned to continue growing and delivering benefits to Fellows and Members in 2021 and beyond.
Angela Ryan said: “Having worked with Bettina at the ADHA for nearly four years I can attest to her leadership working right across the digital health ecosystem to drive widespread adoption and use of digital health systems. Bettina is well-placed to build on Michael Walsh’s leadership, and provide ongoing stewardship to the Institute as digital health continues to play a vital and expanding role in the delivery of health and care, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic.”
-----
10 million telehealth services provided to rural Australians
Wednesday, 02 December, 2020
More than 3.2 million Australians in need of health care in regional, rural and remote Australia have received 10 million telehealth services since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Australian Government has introduced 283 new Medicare Benefits Schedule telehealth items since March 2020, as the first wave of the Coronavirus reached Australia, to reduce the spread of COVID-19.
Federal Health Minister Mark Coulton said the milestone shows that rural Australians were continuing to receive health advice and care via phone and video to manage illnesses, stay well and stay out of hospital.
“Our first priority is the health and safety of the all Australians, and through the course of the pandemic telehealth has helped us protect patients in the regions and our frontline of health professionals,” Minister Coulton said.
-----
https://www.miragenews.com/south-australia-switches-on-electronic-prescriptions/
December 2, 2020 8:04 am AEDT
South Australia switches on electronic prescriptions
South Australians will now have access to electronic prescriptions through the Morrison Government’s ongoing investment in digital health.
Since May, electronic prescriptions have been introduced across the country, with South Australia joining Victoria, the ACT and metropolitan Sydney.
So far, more than one million electronic prescriptions have been issued. This includes over 800,000 original electronic prescriptions and over 400,000 repeat tokens to patients.
Significant progress has been made to connect Australia’s healthcare system, so access to healthcare information and providers is available whenever and wherever it is needed.
-----
Australian healthcare workers demand better technology to improve patient care
Tuesday, 01 December, 2020
A global healthcare study by mobile and IoT management solutions provider SOTI reveals that only 33% of Australian healthcare workers’ time is spent caring for patients.
With research conducted across seven countries (Australia, UK, Germany, France, Sweden, the US and Canada) among homecare workers, visiting nurses and nurses in the field, in both private and public sectors, the report finds that two-thirds of Australian healthcare workers agree their organisation needs to invest in new or better technology to improve patient care.
In fact, 66% of Australian healthcare workers indicated that the technology currently deployed by their organisation wastes valuable time that could otherwise be used to help patients. In addition, 84% said they often struggle with their technology set-ups in the field — when they are outside of the healthcare facility visiting and caring for patients — which further takes time away from patient care.
“In this new research report, we’ve looked at how current systems and technology are supporting healthcare workers on the frontline to meet the incredibly demanding challenges brought on by the pandemic,” SOTI APAC VP of Sales Michael Dyson said.
-----
Sleeping beauty: ApneaSeal aims to emulate ResMed
Carrie LaFrenz Senior reporter
Nov 30, 2020 – 12.00am
After more than two decades with global giant ResMed as head of technology, Phil Kwok turned his innovation nous to local medical technology company ApneaSeal, which is behind a personalised mask used to treat sleep apnoea.
While Mr Kwok does not expect the company to be profitable for another 12 months after launching its first product a month ago, its 3D-printing technology had already snared interest from global players, including the dual-listed ResMed.
Mr Kwok has three decades of experience in the sleep apnoea and respiratory devices fields and was one of the early staffers at ResMed. He is an inventor or co-inventor in over 1400 patent cases.
He believes ApneaSeal's mask will be a global product, and he already has sights on filing with the US Food and Drug Administration next year.
-----
https://medicalrepublic.com.au/covid-a-catalyst-for-virtual-health/37941
4 December 2020
COVID a catalyst for virtual health
Posted by Lynnette Hoffman
When Sydney Local Health District launched RPA Virtual Hospital last February, it was simply part of a longstanding business plan to reduce growth in beds over the next decade.
But opening NSW’s first virtual hospital just before a global pandemic turned out to be good timing.
“We saw it as a sustainability strategy,” Sydney Local Health District’s chief innovation officer Richard Taggart told attendees at the recent Digital Health Institute Summit. “Little did we know it was going to be part of our mission-critical response to COVID-19.
“We thought we’d see 2000 patients in our first 12 months, and we’ve blown past that considerably. We’re now seeing close to 6000 patients who’ve gone through RPA virtual.”
-----
New Study Highlights State of Artificial Intelligence in the Healthcare Industry
Multi-national research finds healthcare AI maturing, despite staffing and data challenges
SYDNEY, Australia, December 3, 2020 – Healthcare organisations seeking to implement and extend their artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities struggle with finding skilled personnel and sufficient, high quality data, according to a new IDC White Paper, sponsored by InterSystems, AI In Healthcare: Early Stage with Steady March to Maturity.
The study amassed insights from more than 200 hospitals in the U.S., UK, and Germany. The survey explores the delay in AI adoption in the healthcare industry compared to other industries, the breadth of use cases of interest to healthcare providers, as well as the role data quality plays as a primary barrier for adoption.
Key findings from the study include:
- Half (50%) of respondents have an AI framework in place; the remaining respondents will be online within 24 months.
- 46 percent of respondents reported that data volume and confidence in the data are critical success factors in AI adoption.
- Applying AI to improve data quality is among the top three reasons 35 percent of organisations plan to adopt it.
- Only 21 percent of organisations intend to build AI algorithms in-house in 2020; declining to 18 percent by 2023.
- AI deemed more important to healthcare providers: 38 percent of healthcare organisations indicated that AI is a corporate priority, compared to 33 percent of respondents in a global, multisector survey.
“With a heightened focus on quality data and models that can be used by both developers and data scientists, healthcare organisations can accelerate and leverage the true power of AI,” said Cynthia Burghard, IDC Research Director for Value-based Healthcare IT Transformation Strategies. “Healthcare leaders must invest now in their data quality and push for clean, harmonised data in order to implement and get the most out of their AI tools.”
-----
NBN overprovisioning makes lowest two speed tiers faster than advertised
Chances are if you are on a 12Mbps or 25Mbps fixed-line NBN plan, even during busy hours, you'll be getting over 100% of the advertised speed.
By Chris Duckett | December 4, 2020 -- 02:32 GMT (13:32 AEDT) | Topic: Networking
Thanks to the National Broadband Network (NBN) overprovisioning its plans by between 10% and 15%, it is very likely that customers on NBN's lowest two fixed-line speed tiers -- 12Mbps and 25Mbps -- are getting speeds faster than what is on the label.
According to the latest Measuring Broadband Australia report released by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), the average speed was 101.2% of the labelled speed across 5,142 tests on 12Mbps lines, and 101.4% of the so-called 25Mbps label across almost 20,000 tests.
"Prior to this change, an NBN100 service would have been provisioned at slightly above 100Mbps plan speed; after protocol overhead, the highest speed test result which we could have measured might have been around 94Mbps," the report said.
"After the change, the same service might have been provisioned at above 100Mbps plan speed, meaning that even after protocol overheads we might still measure speeds around or slightly above 100Mbps. The increase in CVC has meant that there is sufficient capacity for RSPs to deliver speeds that are very close to the maximum set download speed."
-----
Friday, 04 December 2020 11:54
Broadband speeds continue to improve during pandemic, ACCC finds
Broadband speeds have been hitting records during the pandemic, with RSPs now able to deliver almost 94% of the plan speed during the peak evening hours, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission says.
In its 11th Measuring Broadband Australia report, the consumer watchdog said some monitored services were routinely attaining higher speeds than expected.
The report found that between 84.8% and 98.5% of maximum plan speeds were achieved by users with all RSPs during the hours of 7pm to 11pm, normally considered the busy period.
Additionally, the report said, more than half the services monitored achieved download speeds better than the plan specifications when averaged across the entire day.
-----
Wednesday, 02 December 2020 19:39
NBN Co takes on another $1.2b of debt over five years
The NBN Co, the body rolling out Australia's national broadband network, has taken on another $1.2 billion of debt at 1% over five years.
The company said in a statement on Tuesday that the transaction was due to be settled on Thursday (3 December) and would mature on 3 December 2025.
In May, the NBN Co borrowed $6.1 billion in debt finance from external markets.
The Federal Government, which has funded the building of the network, flagged some time ago that it expected the firm to pursue debt financing through external markets, including in order to start the process of re-financing its loan.
-----
Wednesday, 02 December 2020 10:46
‘Millions’ of scam calls blocked in trials, says Communications Alliance
Millions of scam telephone calls have been blocked in recent trial initiatives, according to telecoms industry peak body Communications Alliance, in the lead up to the newly announced introduction of a new industry code aimed at stopping scam calls.
Communications Alliance CEO John Stanton said service providers are investing in new technologies and processes to enable them to realise the objectives and requirements of the new Code and to combat the “scourge” of scam telephone calls.
As reported by iTWire, the Federal Government has released a new industry code that it claims will stop scam calls by detecting, tracing and blocking them.
In a statement, the government claimed that Australians had lost about $36 million to scam calls so far this year.
-----
Wednesday, 02 December 2020 08:55
New government code aims to detect, trace and block spam calls
The Federal Government has released a new industry code that it claims will stop scam calls by detecting, tracing and blocking them.
In a statement, the government claimed that Australians had lost about $36 million to scam calls so far this year.
Communications Minister Paul Fletcher welcomed the Reducing Scam Calls Code which has been developed by the telecommunications industry and registered by the Australian Communications and Media Authority.
-----
NBN Co opens instant quote generator for user-pays fibre upgrades
By Ry Crozier on Dec 1, 2020 11:42AM
Early quotes range from $2000 to $22,000.
NBN Co has soft-launched the instant quote generator for its user-pays upgrade program Technology Choice.
The calculator, which appears to have launched early yesterday, offers users a “free quote and check [of] the build costs to upgrade to NBN fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) at a single premises before proceeding with an application”.
The company said in late September that it planned to offer instant online quotes as part of a broader set of changes to Technology Choice that also includes the removal of an application fee.
Would-be upgraders are directed to validate their address and then provide contact details; the quote is not displayed online, but rather emailed to the user.
-----
Optus boss takes aim at Netflix's 'free go' on data usage
By Supratim Adhikari
November 30, 2020 — 7.12pm
Optus boss Kelly Bayer Rosmarin says video streaming services like Netflix need to do more to take the pressure off broadband networks as telcos scramble to meet rising consumer demand for data.
Speaking at a business outlook briefing on Monday, Ms Bayer Rosmarin said that while the likes of Netflix were driving the data demand on networks, they don't invest directly into upgrading the core networks.
With streaming media content and gaming driving the spikes in network traffic during the lockdowns, Ms Bayer Rosmarin said over-the-top (OTT) streaming services must become part of the broader industry conversation around fortifying broadband networks.
"We need some sort of a redifiniton of our industry, at the moment there's a lot of OTT providers, whether video streamers or gaming companies that can have a major impact on the level of infrastructure-build that's required," she said.
-----
https://www.itnews.com.au/news/optus-chief-takes-aim-at-ott-services-nbn-558380
Optus chief takes aim at OTT services, NBN
By Ry Crozier on Nov 30, 2020 1:11PM
Sector’s profitability should interest policy makers.
Optus boss Kelly Bayer Rosmarin took aim at over-the-top service providers, the NBN and others “stripping profitability” out of the sector, and said government and policymakers should take a keener interest in the sector’s fortunes.
In a business outlook briefing on Monday, Bayer Rosmarin argued telecommunications is an essential service that is “highly valued by the community” but perhaps less so by policymakers.
“Structural shifts are stripping profitability out of the sector,” she said.
“[There’s] the NBN, the growth of the Tier 2 MVNO [mobile virtual network operator] market, and the over-the-top providers who contribute little if anything to the infrastructure they rely on, yet drive increased usage and continued investment for telecommunications infrastructure providers.”
-----
China successfully lands Chang’e-5 spacecraft on moon to gather lunar rocks
By Joe McDonald
December 2, 2020 — 4.23am
Beijing: A Chinese robot probe sent to return lunar rocks to Earth for the first time since the 1970s has landed on the moon, the government announced, adding to a string of increasingly bold space missions by Beijing.
The Chang'e 5 probe "successfully landed" at its planned site on Tuesday, state TV and news agencies reported, citing the China National Space Administration. They didn't immediately announce any more details.
The probe, launched on November 24 from the tropical southern island of Hainan, is the latest venture by a Chinese space program that fired a human into orbit in 2003, has a probe en route to Mars and aims eventually to land a human on the moon.
Plans call for the robot lander to drill into the lunar surface and load 2 kilograms of rocks and debris into an ascent stage that will blast off to return them to Earth.
-----
https://www.itwire.com/space/csiro-s-radio-telescope-used-to-create-new-atlas-of-universe.html
Thursday, 03 December 2020 06:20
CSIRO's radio telescope used to create new atlas of universe
The CSIRO's Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder, a radio telescope that has few equals in the world, has been used to conduct a survey of the entire southern sky in record speed and detail, creating a new atlas of the universe.
A statement from the CSIRO, Australia's national science agency, said about three million galaxies were mapped in 300 hours.
The Rapid ASKAP Continuum Survey was likened to a Google map of the universe "where most of the millions of star-like points on the map are distant galaxies – about a million of which we've never seen before.It was likened".
CSIRO chief executive Dr Larry Marshall said ASKAP had brought together world-class infrastructure with scientific and engineering expertise to unlock the deepest secrets of the universe.
-----
Enjoy!
David.
