-----
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 were dated 6 December, 2018 and we have seen none since! Its pretty sad!
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.
-----
https://nwmphn.org.au/for-primary-care/digital-health/my-health-record/
My Health Record
ADHA Propaganda
My Health Record is a secure online summary of a person’s health information.
Health care providers authorised by their health care organisation and involved in a patient’s care can view and add information.
The system gives primary care providers access to timely information about their patients, such as:
- hospital discharge summaries
- shared health summaries from a patient’s previous regular GP
- event summaries from a patient’s interactions with a different GP, such as a GP at an after-hours service
- prescription and dispense records
- pathology and diagnostic imaging reports.
The My Health Record system helps to:
- avoid adverse drug events
- enhance patient self-management
- improve patient outcomes
- reduce time spent gathering patient information
- avoid duplication of tests and services.
How can we help?
We have resources to help health care providers connect to the My Health Record system, and can also help with education and training to use the system effectively.
-----
https://www.zdnet.com/article/australias-tangle-of-electronic-surveillance-laws-needs-unravelling/
Australia's tangle of electronic surveillance laws needs unravelling
The government agrees: Australia needs a whole new electronic surveillance Act to sort out the mess. But a bunch of ad hoc laws are already making their way through parliament.
By Stilgherrian for The Full Tilt | January 19, 2021 -- 05:18 GMT (16:18 AEDT) | Topic: Security
The legislative framework that governs Australia's intelligence community is "unnecessarily complex". It leads to "unclear and confusing laws" for the intelligence officers who have to interpret and follow them.
So said the final report of the Comprehensive review of the legal framework of the National Intelligence Community in December 2019 -- although the government didn't publish it until a year later, in December 2020.
Comprehensive indeed: Even the unclassified version runs to more than 1,300 pages.
That review, conducted by former diplomat, public servant, and one-time ASIO chief Dennis Richardson, recommended that as far as electronic surveillance goes, Australia needs a whole new electronic surveillance Act.
-----
Senate calls bluff and takes wind out of tech titans
Google and Facebook huffed, and they puffed, but they didn’t come close to blowing the Senate down.
Now, the digital behemoths appear to be out of breath and out of ideas.
Google continues to bellow its loose threat that it will exit the Australian market entirely if the federal government’s mandatory media bargaining code becomes law.
Really? Is there a company on the planet that would seriously walk away from an annual revenue stream of almost $5bn, just to avoid paying a fraction of that to media businesses whose content they have been cannibalising for years?
New players would be more than happy to fill the void and Google knows it.
-----
No more Google searching? Big tech and publishers reach for their guns
Tony Wright
Associate editor and special writer
January 22, 2021 — 5.26pm
If the internet is the modern Wild West, Google has emerged as the tough town of Tombstone, and Facebook as Dodge City.
Google’s gunslingers have gone so far as threatening to send their own Australian search engine on a one-way trip to the Boot Hill graveyard if the Australian government doesn’t back down from an attempt to force them to pay up.
In short, it is applying that old standby: blackmail. And Facebook is doing the same.
The government wants to make Google and Facebook pay for the news content they merrily extract for free from Australian news publishers such as Nine Entertainment (publisher of The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald), News Corp, Guardian Australia, the ABC and all the rest.
-----
Off you DuckDuckGo: Google threatens the nuclear option
Google’s threat to close local search would be a big wrench for consumers, but would give Aussies a chance to sample life away from its all seeing eye.
Paul Smith Technology editor
Jan 22, 2021 – 2.45pm
It didn’t take long for the gloves to come off in Friday’s Parliamentary inquiry about the controversial media bargaining code, which has shaped up as a high profile battle between the Australian government and two of the world’s biggest companies, Google and Facebook.
It has been hinted at in blog posts and previous media interviews, but Google’s local boss (whether planned or in the heat of the moment) revealed the big red button on her desk, threatening to turn off Google search in Australia if the code comes into place in its current form.
Let’s make no bones about it: this is a huge threat, perhaps the biggest the company could make short of blocking access to YouTube and all of its other products. Facebook’s threat to stop allowing news to be shared by Australian users, seems almost tame alongside it.
In its inquiry report, the ACCC said Google accounts for 95 per cent of Australian web searches. To “Google it” has become a default phrase for most people thinking about looking up information online.
-----
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=3c1783e8-7c39-4f03-a191-f944658ec92e
Digital Health in Australia: 2021
Australia, Global, USA January 22 2021
Market overview and transactional issues
Key market players and innovations
1. Who are the key players active in your local digital health market (eg, healthcare providers, research partners, government and academic institutions and investors) and what are the most prominent areas of innovation?
Key players include:
- the Australian government (funds 42 per cent of all health services, including 78 per cent of research), especially the Department of Health, the Therapeutic Goods Administration, the Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF) and the Australian Digital Health Agency (ADHA), which is responsible for the National Digital Health Strategy and operates MyHealth Record;
- state and territory governments (fund 27 per cent of all health services), which among other things operate Australia’s public hospitals, including emergency departments and ambulance services;
- private healthcare businesses, including operators of private hospitals, day surgeries, primary and referred care clinics and imaging and pathology services;
- healthcare professionals;
- developers and suppliers of digital heath systems;
- private health insurers (fund 9 per cent of all health services);
- venture capital and private equity funds;
- academic institutions, especially the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation and universities;
- a range of cross-sector innovation and commercialisation bodies, including ANDHealth, the Digital Health Cooperative Research Centre and MTPConnect; and
- industry associations, including the Medical Software Industry Association, the Medical Technology Association of Australia and the Australasian Institute of Digital Health.
The industry has delivered innovations across both infrastructure and capabilities, with the key publicly funded innovation being the launch of MyHealth Record, an online platform that aggregates an individual’s key health information and provides interoperability between clinical information systems across the health sector. It is estimated that 65 per cent of public hospitals have deployed electronic medical records (EMR) systems, with an 85 per cent deployment rate in the most populous state, and most states and territories have strategies for further deployment of electronic health records, including medical imaging systems, medication management systems (eMeds), patient administration systems (PAS) and laboratory information systems (LIS).
-----
Friday, 22 January 2021 10:20
Google signs French deal to pay newspapers for snippets
French authorities have signed an agreement with Google for the search company to pay publishers for the use of news snippets in search results.
Back in April last year, the company agreed to comply with a ruling that it must pay publishing companies and news agencies for re-using content they produce.
The agreement is based on the EU Copyright Directive that came into force last year.
Initially, Google said it would restrict its usage to headlines and not pay anything to publishers but the competition authority ruled that this would be an abuse of Google's monopoly law.
-----
Friday, 22 January 2021 14:09
Reset Australia says 'Google’s egregious threats prove regulation is long overdue'
Although Google has come to a deal to pay French publishers for news. Google Australia is threatening to withdraw Google Search and services from Australia, with Reset Australia's Chris Cooper suggesting regulation is the answer.
As noted in colleague Sam Varghese's article entitled: "Google signs French deal to pay newspapers for snippets", French authorities have signed an agreement with Google for the search company to pay publishers for the use of news snippets in search results.
Sam's article has details of the agreement, as well a link to his story on Australia's effort to get Google to pay having progressed to a Parliamentary Senate hearing.
His story about Google's unwillingness to accept Australia's desires is here.
-----
Right-wing social app Parler shows sign of life thanks to Russian tech
By Jack Nicas
January 21, 2021 — 3.25pm
Parler, the social network popular with Trump supporters and the alt-right, is trickling back to life.
The social network went offline last week after Amazon booted it from its computer servers for not consistently removing violent posts, an accusation that Parler denied. But after a week in which Parler executives sued Amazon and predicted that their site might never return, they are forecasting it will be back up and running by the month's end.
That turnabout is thanks, in part, to a Russian company.
Parler has entered into business with DDoS-Guard, a Russian firm that routes internet traffic and protects websites from cyber-attacks. With its help, visitors to Parler.com now find a basic webpage with a promise from Parler's chief executive, John Matze, that "our return is inevitable."
But the use of a Russian company is worrying some researchers who study the internet and Russia. If Parler routes its web traffic through DDoS-Guard when its full website returns, the experts said, Russian law could enable the Russian government to surveil Parler's users.
-----
https://www.itnews.com.au/news/google-threatens-to-withdraw-search-engine-in-australia-560068
Google threatens to withdraw search engine in Australia
By Justin Hendry on Jan 22, 2021 12:21PM
Cites “unworkable” news media bargaining code.
Google has threatened to stop making its search engine available in Australia if the federal government’s landmark mandatory media bargaining law passes in its current form.
Managing director Mel Silva on Friday told a senate inquiry that the proposed code “remains unworkable”, despite government attempts to placate the web giant in a December revision.
Google had previously warned that the code could lead to a “dramatically worse” online experience and the possible end to free services, but until now had not flagged stopping Google Search entirely.
Silva said the company’s concerns centre around three areas, the most salient of which is “the requirement to pay for links and snippets in search”.
-----
QAnon and targeted abuse require online reform: commissioner
Paul Smith Technology editor
Jan 22, 2021 – 12.00am
Australia's eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, has warned big tech platforms that they must do more to tackle the problems caused by anonymous accounts on their services, ahead of the proposed introduction of new powers that could force individuals to be unmasked and see fines levied.
Anonymous social media accounts used by proponents of the far-right conspiracy theory QAnon were prominently cited by members of the mob that stormed the US Capitol on January 6. The government, meanwhile, has already opened up consultations on new laws to force tech platforms to take abuse, abhorrent material and trolling more seriously.
In a position statement to be released on Friday, the commissioner lays out the vexed issues that are raised by plans to regulate online anonymity. Although some of the worst online behaviour is propagated by anonymous accounts, anonymity is also a powerful form of protection for victims of domestic violence, whistleblowers and people living under authoritarian regimes.
Facebook and Google are already locked in battle with the Australian government over the proposed media bargaining code, which will see the companies pay publishers for the content they display in their products.
-----
Google threatens to exit Australia
Timothy Moore, Natasha Rudra and Natasha Boddy
Updated Jan 22, 2021 – 10.55am, first published at 1.20am
Google threatens to exit Australia if forced to pay for news
Miranda Ward
Google has repeated warnings if the proposed news media bargaining code became law, the digital giant would be forced to stop making its search product in Australia.
Local boss Mel Silva told a Senate hearing that unrestricted linking between websites is fundamental to search and if Google were required to pay news publishers for links and snippets in search, it would create unmanageable financial and operational risk.
“It would give us no real choice but to stop making Google search available in Australia," she said.
"That would be a bad outcome for us but also for the Australian people, media diversity and the small businesses who use our products every day."
-----
US claims digital code breaks free trade deal
Jan 21, 2021 – 12.01am
A powerful coalition of American government and business organisations attacked the government's crackdown on Facebook and Google, saying it discriminates against Silicon Valley technology giants and breaches the Australia-US Free Trade Agreement.
Google, Facebook, Twitter, Atlassian, the US Chamber of Commerce and the "father of the internet" strongly oppose the proposed legislation, which is designed to level the playing field between digital companies and news publishers.
Proposed legislation presses Google and Facebook to strike deals with Australian publishers that would ensure news creators were paid fairly by the digital platforms for journalism.
Divisions with the US on the regulation of its largest companies will be an early test for the Morrison government's relations with the Biden administration, which has been financially supported by tech titans.
Democrats support US moves to "break up" the powerful tech companies, but both sides of American politics have historically been hostile towards other jurisdictions unilaterally regulating and taxing their corporations.
FreeTV Australia chair and former Fairfax Media chief Greg Hywood told The Australian Financial Review the government should not give into the "bullying" because the digital giants have "only got themselves to blame" for a mandatory code after years of not paying publishers appropriate rates for news content.
-----
'There’s no other law like this in Australia': Facebook hits out at digital media code
By Zoe Samios
January 20, 2021 — 9.00pm
The local head of $960 billion social media giant Facebook has urged the government to make changes to laws designed to force digital platforms to pay media companies for content, claiming the proposed rules are without precedent in Australia.
In his first major comments since threatening to pull all news from Facebook in September last year, Facebook's Australian managing director Will Easton said the new code remained "unworkable" and could force the social media giant to strike up to 1,000 deals with publishers in Australia.
"There’s no other law like this in Australia. No other business is forced into a highly uncertain binding arbitration process where the government decides who enters these agreements and forces payment from the provider of a free service," he said.
The comments are contained in blog post to be released by Facebook on Thursday, seen by The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. It comes ahead of key appearances by Facebook executives and other industry executives before a federal Senate committee on Friday.
-----
https://medicalrepublic.com.au/on-the-future-of-telehealth-and-virtual-care/38788
19 January 2021
On the future of telehealth and virtual care
Posted by Lynnette Hoffman
Telehealth hasn’t appeared magically out of thin air, but its widespread use may be a lasting legacy of COVID.
The task ahead is to capitalise off the unprecedented uptake, and embed it into “the new normal”, says Dr Zoran Bolevich, chief executive of eHealth NSW and CIO of NSW Health.
“We have been using telehealth in NSW Health for many years … at least two decades,” Dr Bolevich says.
“But what we have seen during the COVID situation is that tools such as video consultations just started to be used a lot, lot more. So we’re not talking like a 10 or 20% increase, but five, six, seven times more than what we’ve seen in the past.”
Prioritising and then systematising innovations and new models of care has been paramount.
------
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=0fd44da4-d417-4181-bfb8-c4e3fb5cb7f0
At a glance: intellectual property for digital health in Australia
Australia January 6 2021
Intellectual property
Patentability and inventorship
What are the most noteworthy rules and considerations relating to the patentability and inventorship of digital health-related inventions?
Patentees of digital health-related inventions, which often require computer implementation in one form or another, need to navigate the patentability requirement in Australia. While abstract ideas and computer-implemented inventions are not regarded as patentable subject matter in Australia, patents directed to other aspects of digital health-related inventions such as hardware, telemetry and diagnostic tools may be patent-eligible.
Patent prosecution
What is the patent application and registration procedure for digital health technologies in your jurisdiction?
The Australian patent system provides the same application process across all technologies, including digital health. There are no specific provisions for digital health technologies. IP Australia (incorporating the Australian Patent Office) is responsible for pre-grant examinations, pre-grant oppositions, re-examinations and amendments to patents and patent applications. As in other jurisdictions, the process of filing to grant can take more than 18 months.
------
https://medicalrepublic.com.au/health-data-protection-rules-are-a-mess/38877
19 January 2021
Health data protection rules are a mess
The Australian Digital Health Agency wants changes made to the My Health Records Act under which it operates to make its reporting of data breaches more practical, and to harmonise the application of privacy rules across Australia.
Normally the ADHA saying that the privacy rules need to be eased and simplified might arouse a good deal of suspicion among privacy and consumer advocates, but reading the application it quickly becomes clear that privacy legislation for Australian healthcare data is a mess, largely created by different federal and state privacy rules not talking to each other, and AHDA management is making an important point.
Not that they’ll be able to sort much out.
When the MHR system was commenced it was given its very own data breach and privacy rules, ostensibly because the creators knew that a national health record system would raise a lot of eyebrows so they needed the MHR to appear extra safe. The intention was to provide an additional level of transparency and reliability for consumers.
-----
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=0f16f60d-811f-4f3b-bb5f-df9f7cebb2e2
At a glance: data protection and management of health data in Australia
Australia January 6 2021
Data protection and management
Definition of `health data'
What constitutes ‘health data’? Is there a definition of ‘anonymised’ health data?
Health data includes:
· information or an opinion about an individual’s health or any health services provided, or to be provided, to the individual;
· any personal information collected to provide or in providing a ‘health service’ to an individual (including organ donation); and
· genetic information about an individual that is in a form that could be predictive about the health of an individual (or relative of the individual).
The concept of ‘providing health services’ is very broad and can capture a range of services that may not be front of mind when thinking about health – for example, information collected by a gym on an individual in connection with a gym class, or Medicare billing information held by an insurance provider or debt collector.
Anonymised health data is not defined, although the Australian Privacy Principles (APP) Guidelines state that ‘anonymity’ means that an individual dealing with an entity cannot be identified. Critically, health data that may be anonymous in the hands of one entity may not be anonymous in the hands of another. The ability of an entity to link a data set with other information is relevant to whether data is truly anonymised.
-----
Big Tech has no claim to moral high ground
On a sunny winter morning in San Bernardino, California, Syed Farook and wife Tashfeen Malik slaughtered 14 people in a hail of machinegun fire. It took a matter of minutes.
The victims were Farook’s colleagues at the San Bernardino County Department of Public Health, who were gathered together on December 2, 2015 for their staff Christmas party.
Farook and Malik were homegrown Islamist terrorists, radicalised online and inspired by Islamic State. They also died that day in a firefight with police.
Neither Farook nor Malik were on the radar of intelligence agencies — they led normal lives and there were no red flags.
This left the FBI scrambling for answers: How were they radicalised? Were they part of a larger sleeper cell? Would there be more attacks? The FBI believed an Apple iPhone belonging to Farook held some of the answers.
-----
Freedom of speech: Voltaire would applaud Trump Twitter ban
Principal, Maurice Blackburn
January 18, 2021 — 11.55pm
Contrary to suggestions otherwise, Voltaire would have applauded the decision by Twitter and Facebook to suspend the access of Donald Trump to their platforms. Much like John Stuart Mill, the British philosopher and guru of classical liberalism, Voltaire supported criminal laws against libel, slander, incitement to violence and treason. Mill is credited with developing “the harm principle” under which laws restricting personal freedom should be promulgated “to prevent harm to others”.
The decision of Facebook and Twitter to suspend Donald Trump’s access to their platforms was consistent with the harm principle. It was designed to avoid further terrorist violence. Trump incited a violent, fascist coup attended by, among others, many neo-Nazis in which five people died. Shortly before the assault on Capitol Hill, Trump told the mob to “fight much harder”, telling them that “you’ll never take back our country with weakness ... you have to show strength”. He urged that “if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country any more”. Ordinarily, incitement to violence attracts a criminal sanction and Trump may yet face criminal charges.
Nevertheless, the social media ban on Trump has elicited a predictably tribal response from Trump sympathisers replete with misconceived appeals to philosophers and principles that simply don’t exist. Unlike many other politicians across the world, the members of the Morrison government refuse to condemn Trump for his incitement of a fascist coup and the terrorist acts that he inspired precisely because the Coalition is now riddled with Trumpists. For the same reason, Prime Minister Scott Morrison will not seek to rein in the dangerous misinformation spread by backbenchers like Craig Kelly.
-----
https://www.afr.com/world/north-america/is-biden-s-unity-call-another-big-lie-20210118-p56uzr
Is Biden's unity call another big lie?
The new president needs to govern for the whole spectrum of America, not just those sectors that Silicon Valley approves of.
Gary Abernathy
Jan 19, 2021 – 12.00am
It was announced this week that the theme for President-elect Joe Biden's inauguration will be "America United." To achieve such a lofty aspiration, Biden will need to do better than he did following the riot at the US Capitol, when he said US President Donald Trump, Senator Ted Cruz and others who repeat the "big lie" of election fraud were embracing the strategy of Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels.
"You say the lie long enough, keep repeating it, repeating it, repeating it, it becomes common knowledge," said Biden. Of course, Goebbels's thoughts on message repetition were not particularly original, considering marketers have been using the tactic to hawk their products since the dawn of time. (Spoiler alert: Democrats lie, too, and no brand of toothpaste, laundry detergent or shampoo will substantially improve your life.) To achieve unity, eliminating Nazi comparisons would be a good start.
Assuming sanity prevails and we are spared the melodrama of an impeachment trial for a president no longer in office (even if the House's impeachment of Trump this week was admittedly more justifiable than the first one), Biden will probably focus much of his inauguration remarks on two pre-eminent subjects – the fight against COVID-19 and the assault on the Capitol.
But the new president will divide more than unify if he pretends the Capitol incursion happened in a vacuum. He must likewise condemn violence across America instigated by left-leaning agitators and acknowledge there's plenty of blame to go around for a nation more on edge than at any time since the 1960s.
-----
Monday, 18 January 2021 11:50
WhatsApp puts off privacy changes after users desert it in droves
End-to-end encrypted messaging platform WhatsApp has put off privacy changes it planned, after pushback from users who have been moving over to Signal and Telegram in droves.
The company, part of Facebook, now plans to bring in the changes on 15 May, it said in a blog post.
The changes were announced earlier this month and when users opened WhatsApp they were asked to agree to the new terms or else lose the ability to use the platform by February.
The company claims that there will be no changes to the privacy afforded to users, just that some changes will make it possible for advertisers to communicate with users.
-----
Social media platforms are harming our health
By David Shearman
January 18, 2021 — 12.11am
The insurrection against democracy in the US Capitol may have one positive outcome. It may bring home to all remaining democracies that Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms cannot continue to be allowed to peddle lies on COVID-19 that are detrimental to human health.
Their belated action to ban Trump, after he spent four years disseminating disinformation on public health, illustrates the crass irresponsibility of these media behemoths. We need independent regulation of social media platforms to better protect the health and security of humanity.
In the past year, social media platforms have profited from Trump's unstable mind. One large section of the conventional media has also added to the huge adverse health impacts of COVID-19. Trump and the Republicans scorned the use of masks and played down the danger of COVID-19. Deaths in the United States are now approaching 400,000 and collapse of the health service is imminent.
Society has suffered a growing cancer of disinformation, spread by social media, which has now made it difficult for democracies to control the spread of COVID-19. Masks and vaccinations have been the target of much of this disinformation. Does the right to free speech extend to discouraging others from wearing masks, bearing in mind that a mask partially protects you and the community from harm? Does it give you the right to share anti-vaccination propaganda, which risks the spread of dangerous childhood illnesses like measles?
-----
Trump, Twitter and the messy fight over free speech
The decision to ban the President has demonstrated the unaccountable power of the big social media companies.
Richard Waters and Hannah Murphy
Jan 17, 2021 – 10.15am
San Francisco | The decision to bar the US President from the most powerful communication platforms of the age has all the ingredients of a singularly American brawl.
There is Donald Trump’s exploitation of a powerful strand of nativist populism to try to stay in power and the highly partisan right-wing media that have helped fan the election-rigging conspiracy theory that led to last week’s insurrection in the Capitol.
In the background, a long-running aversion to internet regulation has left a regulatory vacuum. And, this being the US, everyone involved claims an undying dedication to free speech and the First Amendment.
But the other defining theme has been the technocratic self-confidence and thinly veiled self-interest of a powerful group of tech executives, who all run American companies but whose decisions have global implications.
As Trump’s indefinite ban took effect on Facebook, Twitter and other sites last week, the decision to de-platform the democratically elected President has exposed as never before the contradictions at the heart of social media.
-----
How Twitter, on the front lines of history, finally banned Trump
Elizabeth Dwoskin and Nitasha Tiku
Jan 17, 2021 – 3.47pm
Two days after the riot at the US Capitol, Twitter's most senior policy executive faced her 5200 colleagues on a video conference and made an impassioned appeal.
Vijaya Gadde's voice was breaking as she implored her colleagues to have patience while her team deliberated over what they knew was the most important decision in the social media service's 15-year history.
Some Twitter employees left the meeting on January 8, not knowing what to think. They were worried for their colleagues' safety – some had already received security threats.
But they were also angry that Gadde's team had let President Donald Trump's account back onto the service after a 12-hour ban for appearing to encourage the Capitol rioters on the day of the failed insurrection. He had already tweeted again, telling followers they were patriots who would not be disrespected.
-----
Comments more than welcome!
David.
