Quote Of The Year

Timeless Quotes - Sadly The Late Paul Shetler - "Its not Your Health Record it's a Government Record Of Your Health Information"

or

H. L. Mencken - "For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong."

Tuesday, April 13, 2021

Commentators and Journalists Weigh In On Digital Health And Related Privacy, Safety, Social Media And Security Matters. Lots Of Interesting Perspectives - April 13, 2021.

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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 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.

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https://www.smh.com.au/national/this-must-not-be-permanent-privacy-experts-sound-alarm-over-qr-codes-20210409-p57hxp.html

‘This must not be permanent’: Privacy experts sound alarm over QR codes

By Andrew Taylor

April 10, 2021 — 7.09pm

Customer Service Minister Victor Dominello has promised mandatory venue check-ins will be lifted “as soon as we get the green light from health experts”, as privacy experts warn the COVID-19 check-in tool lacks safeguards.

Mr Dominello said the QR code system was only intended for contact tracing during “pandemic conditions” but those might continue for some time.

“As soon as we get the green light from health experts that it is no longer necessary, the QR check-in requirement for high-risk venues will be removed,” he said.

Mr Dominello said the data was securely stored for 28 days and then destroyed, and “under no circumstance ... shared with other parties or agencies outside NSW Health”. Privacy was at the “forefront of our thinking” when delivering digital services, he said.

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https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/the-new-world-of-deep-fake-how-cyber-attackers-impersonated-senior-ministers-diplomats-20210409-p57ht7.html

The new world of ‘deep fake’: How cyber attackers impersonated senior ministers, diplomats

By Anthony Galloway

April 10, 2021 — 5.00am

When Hong Kong pro-democracy activists last month received messages from Australia’s Finance Minister, Simon Birmingham, on encrypted messaging service Telegram, they were overjoyed. But it was too good to be true.

The activists quickly realised something was up when “Birmingham” requested they transfer money into a Hong Kong bank account. It was, in fact, a cyber hacker who had somehow managed to verify a Telegram account with Birmingham’s phone number, thereby stealing his contact book. This “phishing” scam also hit Health Minister Greg Hunt, Australia’s ambassador to the United States Arthur Sinodinos and a number of other senior diplomats.

The episode has sent shockwaves and paranoia through the senior ranks of the Australian government and diplomatic corps. It should serve as an early warning that we’re about to enter a new world of “deep fakes”, where we will need to go the extra step in verifying the person we’re talking to is, in fact, who they claim to be.

How did the hackers do it?

Applications such as Telegram, Signal or WhatsApp require you to verify your phone number – with your phone – before you can set up an account. In this instance, the cyber hackers somehow attained the phone numbers of scores of senior Australian politicians and officials and went on a phishing expedition on Telegram, an encrypted messaging app that was widely used in the Hong Kong protests. Numerous politicians and diplomats received messages asking them to verify Telegram. Senior security sources also confirmed WhatsApp, owned by Facebook, was a target but the hackers were less successful on that application.

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https://www.itwire.com/development/ai-use-in-asia-pac-only-in-isolated-projects-idc.html

Thursday, 08 April 2021 11:07

AI use in Asia-Pac restricted to isolated projects: IDC

By Sam Varghese

The use of artificial intelligence is growing in companies in the Asia-Pacific region, but it is mostly used in silos for isolated projects, the technology analyst firm IDC says.

In a statement, the company said a study it had conducted found that 52% of the organisations that had invested in AI were "still in the earlier maturity stages, in which AI is used in silos by select individuals/groups or for isolated projects".

"More so, these organisations have no formal strategy/co-ordination and/or such strategies are only limited to specific projects."

Dr Chris Marshall, associate vice-president for AI and big data and analytics at IDC Asia-Pacific, said: "As Asia/Pacific organisations prioritise digital acceleration and resilience, AI has become a core capability.

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https://medicalrepublic.com.au/a-certain-digital-behemoth-is-blocking-innovation/43256

9 April 2021

A certain digital behemoth is blocking innovation

Comment  MyHealthRecord

By Jeremy Knibbs

Steve Posnack describes himself as “the No 1 No 2 digital health policy development and implementation staffer in the US”.

His role, as the deputy national coordinator for Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONCHIT), in the US, reports directly to a serious political minder appointed by the ruling party of the day.

Yesterday he officially got his new boss from the Democrats, and while Posnack is that sort of refreshing intelligence that can somehow keep you onside regardless of the politics in play, you get a distinct feeling of energy and optimism that is perhaps a little more than his everyday exuberance for his work (of which he always has a lot) and something to do with the Trump regime moving on (for now anyway).

Posnack’s job – how he’s managed it in the past 10 years, who he reports to – should inform how Australia might better go about converting some pretty robust thinking on digital health in this country into, first, meaningful policy and then successful implementation.

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https://www.afr.com/work-and-careers/leaders/the-five-questions-directors-need-to-ask-about-cyber-security-20210407-p57h4v

The five questions directors need to ask about cyber security

Sally Patten BOSS editor

Apr 9, 2021 – 12.15am

John Mullen wouldn’t wish it on anyone. The Telstra chairman also sits at the helm of logistics group Toll, which was the victim of two cyber attacks in 2020.

Of the first attack, Mullen says: “I can’t remember the time of day now, but you get those calls at midnight or one o’clock in the morning. We were all on deck almost immediately. We didn’t know for some while how far it had gone and how damaging it was, but it escalated by the hour. It was really scary and as a director you really have to look at yourself in the mirror and say: ‘Jesus, what could I have done to have at least mitigated it, if not stopped it?’”

They are questions no director wants to have to ask themselves. Sadly the trend is not on their side. Some 95 per cent of CEOs cited cyber risks as the top threat to business growth this year, up from 86 per cent last year, in a survey of Australian chief executives published in late March by professional services firm PwC.

ANZ’s institutional banking boss, Mark Whelan, told The Australian Financial Review Banking Summit last week that cyber security was the biggest threat facing the banking sector, adding that the number of attacks had escalated during the pandemic to the point where ANZ was receiving 8 to 10 million attacks a month. In late March, Nine Entertainment, the publisher of The Australian Financial Review, was hit by a cyber attack, disrupting its broadcast and print operations.

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https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/the-wall-street-journal/global-it-spending-expected-to-rise-84-to-41-trillion-this-year/news-story/b59405e71a2320951221a089de276bca

Global IT spending expected to rise 8.4% to $4.1 trillion this year

Chief information officers and other corporate technology leaders are moving on from stopgap information technology measures deployed during the coronavirus pandemic and eyeing more ambitious projects, according to the latest IT spending forecast by research and consulting firm Gartner Inc.

Companies world-wide are expected to spend $4.1 trillion on IT this year, up 8.4% from 2020 and regaining the pace of corporate IT growth before Covid-19 brought much of the global economy to a standstill, Gartner said.

Many businesses are bolstering videoconferencing and collaboration tools, which helped support remote work during the crisis, as they lay the groundwork for a permanent shift to hybrid offices combining physical and virtual workspaces.

Ramped up spending of more than 10% from last year on both enterprise software and devices is expected to lead the gains, Gartner said.

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https://www.afr.com/technology/i-used-clubhouse-and-saw-why-it-s-expected-to-be-valued-at-5b-20210408-p57hdx

I used Clubhouse and saw why it’s expected to be valued at $5b

The invite-only social media app has attracted millions of users since its inception just a year ago, cementing itself as a Silicon Valley favourite.

Katie Canales

Apr 8, 2021 – 8.55am

Key Points

  • Clubhouse is an invite-only, audio social media app featuring conversation rooms that users can tune into.
  • It launched in March last year and has grown into a popular platform, reportedly valued at $US4 billion ($5.3 billion).
  • I tried it out and found why it was so successful during the pandemic, when people lacked community.

Clubhouse is one of those things I’ve kept at arm’s length for months – until now.

The invite-only social media app has attracted millions of users since its inception just a year ago, cementing itself as a Silicon Valley favourite. It’s also reportedly in talks for a funding round that values the company at $US4 billion ($5.3 billion).

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https://www.afr.com/technology/australian-privacy-watchdog-examines-facebook-data-dump-20210407-p57haf

Australian privacy watchdog examines Facebook data dump

Max Mason Senior reporter

Apr 8, 2021 – 9.22am

The privacy watchdog has begun looking into the personal details of more than 7.3 million Australians’ personal details following a massive dump of information on more than half a billion Facebook user profiles.

The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC), which is already litigating against Facebook over the Cambridge Analytica scandal, is in the early stages of assessing the information that was made available for free on a hacking forum over the Easter long weekend.

“The OAIC is conducting inquiries into the issue reported in the media and seeking to establish the facts and circumstances, including the extent to which the personal information of Australians may have been impacted,” an OAIC spokesman said.

The dump includes personal information of more than 533 million Facebook users from across the world in 106 countries. Alon Gal, the co-founder of cyber security firm Hudson Rock, posted details that showed more than 7.3 million Australian user accounts were subject to the leak.

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https://apo.org.au/node/311724

What’s really at stake with vaccine passports

5 Apr 2021

Elizabeth Renieris

Publisher Centre for International Governance Innovation

COVID-19 Electronic surveillance Immunisation Digital identity Disease management Infectious diseases

Description

As the world looks to slowly emerge from the grip of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, and more than a year of associated border closures, travel restrictions, widespread shutdowns and other limitations on once-normal activities, the idea of a digital 'vaccine passport' for COVID-19 is also gaining momentum. While proposals come in different varieties, sometimes called 'vaccine passports,' 'immunity certificates' or 'green passes,' among other names, the underlying idea is the same — to provide a digital certificate or credential intended to prove something about an individual’s health status with respect to the pathogen responsible for COVID-19, such as whether the individual has been vaccinated against, tested negative for or recovered from the virus.

Each implementation requires a combination of health information, identity verification tools and a mechanism for presenting the certificate or credential, typically in the form of a digital wallet that can present a Quick Response (QR) code or another digital artifact. While we are quite focused on the health information and technology components, we should not lose sight of the third identity-related pillar. In fact, rather than thinking about vaccine passports as temporary, isolated, public health-related measures, we should view them as just one example of how the pandemic is accelerating the rollout of digital identity infrastructure and consider the broader implications for society, particularly as commercial and economic incentives predominate.

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https://www.digitalhealth.gov.au/healthcare-providers/cyber-security/cyber-security-awareness

Cyber security awareness

Helping healthcare organisations to develop awareness of cyber risks and security behaviours

Are you a healthcare consumer?

Cyber security for everyone

Resources

Our Cyber Security Centre

Further cyber security support

Subscribe to cyber security alerts

Contact us

General enquiries

Phone: 1300 901 001
8am - 5pm (AEST/AEDT) Monday - Friday
Email: help@digitalhealth.gov.au

More information

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https://www.itnews.com.au/news/home-affairs-agrees-to-new-five-year-data-centre-deal-with-cdc-563053

Home Affairs agrees to new five-year data centre deal with CDC

By Justin Hendry on Apr 7, 2021 12:40PM

As Global Switch migration gets underway.

The Department of Home Affairs has struck a new five-year data centre hosting deal with Canberra Data Centres to support its migration from Global Switch’s Sydney-based data centre.

The $6.3 million contract, published last week, will allow the department to shift its remaining unclassified and protected-level data from the Chinese-owned facility by July 2022.

The deal comes just weeks after Home Affairs boss Mike Pezzullo revealed the department was finalising a contract with a new Australian-owned data centre provider for the planned exit.

Home Affairs is one of several federal government agencies continuing to use Global Switch, which is no longer an approved data centre provider on the data centre facilities suppliers panel.

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https://www.afr.com/technology/tech-industry-revolt-against-porter-s-appointment-grows-20210406-p57gwr

Tech industry revolt against Porter’s appointment grows

Paul Smith Technology editor

Apr 6, 2021 – 6.10pm

Pressure is rising on Prime Minister Scott Morrison to reverse his decision to appoint Christian Porter as the Minister for Industry, Science and Technology, as more technology industry players spoke out against him taking responsibility for a sector that has sought to increase the participation of women.

The embattled former Attorney-General, who has denied raping a teenage girl 33 years ago when he was 17, responded to a report in The Australian Financial Review, in which executives including Microsoft director of start-ups for the Asia-Pacific, Emily Rich, said the industry would reduce its engagement with the government due to his appointment.

Critics have said that, aside from the shadow of the unresolved rape allegations, Mr Porter lacks experience in technology and would be too focused on saving his political career and a defamation fight over the ABC’s coverage of the allegations, to properly lead the sector.

“As the incoming minister, I look forward to working closely with all those who share the government’s interest in helping businesses to innovate and grow, while also generating new and higher-paid job opportunities for Australian workers,” Mr Porter said in an emailed response to questions about industry concerns.

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https://www.hospitalhealth.com.au/content/technology/article/how-tapping-into-telehealth-has-extended-our-reach-of-services-173312442

How tapping into telehealth has extended our reach of services

By Marion Adeney-Steel, Clinical Lead Physiotherapist at Remedy Healthcare
Tuesday, 30 March, 2021

COVID-19 has forced most industries to adapt and change, but the healthcare sector is one that will likely never return to a pre-COVID normal. Digital transformations that were pegged to take decades happened almost overnight due to the pandemic. Transformations such as advances in telehealth, particularly in video, changed the way healthcare providers, such as Remedy Healthcare, delivered and continue to deliver services.

Prior to COVID-19, Remedy Healthcare Allied Health Services operated exclusively in-person but the announcement of lockdown restrictions in March 2020 forced us to make a critical decision — find a way to consult with patients remotely or risk losing the ability to consult with and treat our patients altogether. With 350 healthcare professionals across nursing, physiotherapy, occupational therapy, podiatry and exercise physiology, this was no easy task.

The solution to our dilemma — a situation I can imagine many other healthcare services across the country faced — was to shift to entirely remote consultations. This choice was vital for protecting the health of our clients and employees. Leading Australian video telehealth platform Coviu was integral in enabling us to continue servicing patients throughout lockdowns and beyond.

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https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/technology/why-the-covidsafe-app-failed/news-story/7912183d6371647dd3d72e83ee3caed8

Why the COVIDSafe app failed

Dave Colls

April 5, 2021

The 27th of this month will mark the 1st birthday of the Australian Government’s COVID-19 contact tracing app. You know, the one that keeps a log of bluetooth connections your smartphone makes with the mobiles of people you’ve come into contact with? The one that would make it simpler for health authorities to trace potential COVID-19 carriers in the case of a positive diagnosis? The one that just under half of us would need to download and use?

Australia is not unique when it comes to launching a COVID contact tracing app that didn’t quite live up to the hype.

According to an Oxford University Report, when it comes to the effectiveness of a tracing app about 60 per cent of the population needs to “use the app and adhere to the app’s recommendations”, but Australia didn’t reach that. In fact, COVIDSafe was languishing at No. 8 in iTunes App Store’s health and wellness charts – one behind the Tasmanian Government’s own QR code scanning app Check in TAS.

Despite good intentions and many merits, the notion that a particular app was the solution to a health and societal crisis was the root problem for countries that jumped on the Covid tracing app bandwagon. Perhaps the only two to come out smiling were Ireland, because its app was spectacularly cheap to build and hence a cheap failure, and New Zealand, which led with a truly integrated approach.

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https://www.afr.com/technology/banks-look-for-shared-effort-in-escalating-cyber-war-20210401-p57g0i

Banks look for shared effort in escalating cyber war

Paul Smith Technology editor

Apr 5, 2021 – 10.43am

Chief information security officers at two of Australia’s big four banks believe improvements in real-time intelligence sharing and assistance for smaller businesses to beef up their cyber security would help the industry navigate increasingly dangerous waters, after Australian Prudential Regulation Authority chairman Wayne Byers last week said a material breach at a major institution was inevitable.

The threat of cyber attacks crippling the operations of major companies came into sharp focus last week after Nine Entertainment, the publisher of The Australian Financial Review, was compromised by a suspected ransomware attacks, from which it is still recovering.

Mr Byers’ comments came at last week’s Australian Financial Review Banking Summit, where Australia and New Zealand Banking Group institutional banking boss Mark Whelan described cyber attacks as the biggest single threat in banking today.

Speaking to the Financial Review following the summit, ANZ’s chief information security officer, Lynwen Connick, said the last year had had a significant increase in the pace, scale and sophistication of cyber threats; ANZ now is blocking between 8 million and 10 million malicious emails a month, compared with 4 million a month a year ago.

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https://www.afr.com/technology/facebook-data-on-more-than-500-million-accounts-leaked-online-20210405-p57ghi

Facebook data on more than 500 million accounts leaked online

Associated Press

Apr 5, 2021 – 7.57am

New York | Details from more than 500 million Facebook users have been found available on a website for hackers.

The information appears to be several years old, but it is another example of the vast amount of information collected by Facebook and other social media sites, and the limits to how secure that information is.

The availability of the data set was first reported by Business Insider. According to that publication, it has information from 106 countries including the phone number of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook users, Facebook IDs, full names, locations, birthdates, and email addresses.

Facebook has been grappling with data security issues for years. In 2018, the social media giant disabled a feature that allowed users to search for one another via phone number following revelations that the political firm Cambridge Analytica had accessed information on up to 87 million Facebook users without their knowledge or consent.

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https://www.smh.com.au/technology/facebook-data-on-millions-of-users-reemerges-online-for-free-20210404-p57get.html

Facebook data on millions of users re-emerges online for free

By Kurt Wagner

April 4, 2021 — 3.20pm

The personal data of more than half a billion Facebook users re-emerged online for free on Saturday (US time), a reminder of the company’s ability to collect mountains of information and its struggles to protect these sensitive assets.

The leak includes personal information on 533 million Facebook users, such as phone numbers, Facebook IDs, full names, locations, birth dates, bios and in some cases email addresses, Business Insider reported.

“This is old data that was previously reported on in 2019,” a Facebook spokesperson wrote in an email statement. “We found and fixed this issue in August 2019.”

At the time, the company addressed a flaw in its technology that allowed the information to leak out. However, once such data escapes from Facebook’s network, the company has limited power to stop it from spreading online.

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https://www.chnact.org.au/for-health-professionals/digital-health/my-health-record/

My Health Record

For Health Professionals Digital Health  ADHA Propaganda

My Health Record

My Health Record is a secure online summary of a person’s key health information. It is part of a national system that is accessible anytime, anywhere. This allows medical professionals and patients to access their health record wherever they are as long as there is internet connection. Patients can control which health practitioners are approved to access but this protocol can be breached during an emergency situation.

Patients, GPs, specialists and pharmacists can add clinical documents in My Health Record. This includes:

  • Shared health summaries, allergies, discharge summaries, diagnostic and pathology reports.
  • Prescription records and pharmacists shared medicine lists.
  • Medicare documents such as Medicare Benefits Schedule (MBS) and Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) claims, Australian Immunisation Register (AIR) records, and organ donor register status.
  • Emergency contact, advance care planning documents and custodian details.

Having access to all this health information may avoid adverse drug reactions for patients, can improve communication between a patient’s multidisciplinary care teams, and may avoid duplication of services.

The Australian Digital Health Agency is constantly working collaboratively with various software providers to make it easy for health care practitioners to view, download and upload clinical information.

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Comments more than welcome!

David.

 

Monday, April 12, 2021

Weekly Australian Health IT Links – 12 April, 2021.

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

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It seems to have been one of those pretty quiet weeks with a few security stories and the odd implementation tale!

Of course there was the weekly ADHA press release extolling the virtues of the #myHR!

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https://www.itnews.com.au/news/healthengine-paid-38m-for-vaccine-booking-system-563143

HealthEngine paid $3.8m for vaccine booking system

By Justin Hendry on Apr 9, 2021 1:37PM

Year-long contract gives GP clinics access.

HealthEngine has been paid almost $4 million for the GP booking platform component of the federal government’s Covid-19 vaccination information and booking service.

The Department of Health published the year-long contract on Thursday, more than a month after the company was selected to provide a booking platform for the vaccine rollout.

The platform will be used by GPs clinics, as well as other approved health service providers like pharmacies, that don’t already have a booking system.

It is one part of the end-to-end vaccination information and booking service that citizens can use to book a jab at the more than 4500 GPs enlisted to administer vaccinations.

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https://www.miragenews.com/its-your-health-and-its-in-your-hands-541687/

It’s your health and it’s in your hands

Australian Digital Health Agency

Floods, bushfires and now the COVID-19 pandemic.

Australia has faced ongoing emergency situations and it’s impossible to know when the next one might be.

That is why you need online access to your health information including medicine documents, a summary of your medical history and recent pathology and diagnostic imaging reports.

Having your critical health information in My Health Record can help you to get life-saving medicines during natural disasters when you can’t see a GP, make it home or your paper-based information has been destroyed.

My Health Record can be accessed by emergency departments if you are rushed to hospital and the doctors need to know of any health issues, allergies or medicine you may be taking if you can’t speak.

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https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/nsw-hospitals-hunt-for-rare-blood-clots-linked-to-astrazeneca-vaccine-20210406-p57gy3.html

NSW hospitals hunt for rare blood clots linked to AstraZeneca vaccine

By Kate Aubusson

April 8, 2021 — 5.00am

NSW emergency departments are scouring medical records for blood clot cases linked to the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine as international medicines regulators inch closer to declaring the vaccine may cause the extremely rare condition.

The state’s vaccinators are warning anyone receiving the AstraZeneca shot to be on alert for blood clot symptoms as a precaution following the case of a 44-year-old man hospitalised with a severe and extremely rare clotting disorder in Melbourne on Friday.

Dozens of rare blood clots have been reported worldwide among the tens of millions of AstraZeneca shots administered.

A top official at the European Medicines Agency on Tuesday said there is a causal link between AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine and extremely rare blood clotting syndrome dubbed vaccine-induced prothrombotic immune thrombocytopenia (VIPIT), though the nature of the connection was unclear.

“It is becoming more and more difficult to affirm that there isn’t a cause-and-effect relationship between AstraZeneca vaccines and the very rare cases of blood clots associated with a low level of platelets,” Marco Cavaleri, head of health threats and vaccine strategy at the EMA, told Rome’s Il Messaggero newspaper.

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https://www.theleader.com.au/story/7197556/digital-health-program-helping-seniors-find-reliable-information-online/

April 7 2021 - 8:00AM

St George Careers Development Centre teaching seniors about digital health literacy

Sarah Falson

St George Careers Development Centre has been teaching local seniors about digital health literacy, helping them find relevant information rather than relying on 'Dr Google'.

The Centre has delivered Good Things Foundation Australia's Health My Way program for the past year, helping seniors gain the skills to use online government services MyGov and My Health Record, and learn how to find reliable health information online.

Good Things Foundation - a social change charity that supports people to improve their lives through the use of technology - provided the St George Careers Development Centre with a $5,000 grant, a resource pack and Digital Health Mentor training for their staff.

When restrictions eased in Sydney late last year, the Centre restarted their face-to-face program, running nutrition-themed digital skills information sessions in retirement villages around the St George region.

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https://www.governmentnews.com.au/wa-indigenous-service-embraces-digital-health/

WA Indigenous service embraces digital health

5 April, 2021

An indigenous health service in WA’s Pilbara region is leading the state in the use of digital health records.

Wirraka Maya Health Service in Port Hedland provides primary care, wellbeing and prevention services, as well as coronovirus support and information, to over 7,000 Aboriginal people, many of whom are transient.

It has uploaded the highest number of event summaries and the ninth highest number of shared health summaries to My Health Record in the state, according to Digital Health Agency.

Shared health summaries contain key health information while event summaries record consultations.

The service has also viewed more uploaded documents than any other primary care provider in Western Australia.

Working with Indigenous health services

Wirraka Maya’s senior medical officer Dr Yolande Knight says the digital health record has been useful in keeping the service updated on patient information including pathology, imaging and medication dispensing.

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https://www.ausdoc.com.au/practice/have-you-written-escript-yet-12000-gps-have

Have you written an e-script yet? 12,000 GPs have

Even the Australian Digital Health Agency's most ardent critic says it's winning on the e-prescribing front

29th March 2021

By Antony Scholefield

The Australian Digital Health Agency (ADHA) loves a statistic.

We saw this best with the My Health Record.

But despite some of the numbers being astronomically large — such as the 2.7 billion documents uploaded to the system - often they weren’t too flattering when put in the correct context.

For instance, it turns out that most of those documents are no more than a dump of patients' MBS/PBS claims data rather than documents of immediate clinical value.

However, its latest stat, not related to My Health Record and slightly smaller in scale, does seem immediately impressive.

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https://www.itwire.com/education/isaca-launches-privacy-in-practice-report.html

Thursday, 08 April 2021 13:40

ISACA launches privacy in practice report

By Peter Dinham

The demand for technical privacy professionals is high—but teams are often considered understaffed in these roles, according to ICT professional association ISACA’s Privacy in Practice 2021 survey report.

ISACA says in its Privacy in Practice 2021 report that privacy technologists seeking to fill these key positions and advance their careers can demonstrate their technical privacy skills with its Certified Data Privacy Solutions Engineer (CDPSE) certification and are now able to take the newly launched CDPSE exam.

The CDPSE exam covers three key domain areas—privacy governance, privacy architecture and data lifecycle—which cover the tasks performed by individuals who have significant knowledge, experience and responsibilities in assessing, building and implementing comprehensive technical privacy solutions.

“Given the looming talent and knowledge gaps in implementing privacy by design solutions in a landscape with continually evolving and increasingly complex privacy regulations and requirements, CDPSE has gained notable traction after its initial launch,” says Nader Qaimari, ISACA Chief Product Officer.

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https://www.afr.com/technology/nine-painstakingly-repairs-cyber-attack-damage-20210405-p57gkt

Nine painstakingly repairs cyber attack damage

John Davidson Columnist

Apr 5, 2021 – 2.14pm

Technology staff at Nine Entertainment worked through the Easter weekend to bring the company back online after a serious cyber attack, but it will still be weeks before computer systems are fully restored, a spokesman said.

A week after Nine, publisher of The Australian Financial Review, was hit by what its chief information and technology officer, Damian Cronan, called a “significant, sophisticated and complex” cyber attack, IT staff spent the long weekend going through the broadcaster’s systems one by one and checking for back doors before bringing them back online, the spokesman said.

The attack on Nine’s North Sydney headquarters in the early hours of March 28 initially crippled some IT systems, and led to some television programs not airing that morning.

The company responded by taking many of its publishing, broadcasting and corporate systems offline, including systems not known to be directly affected by the attack, and forensically going through them looking for signs of intrusion, as well as for back doors that could let attackers back into those systems once the initial attack was resolved, a spokesman said.

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https://www.itwire.com/security/nine-still-mum-on-network-attack-details-as-recovery-continues.html

Monday, 05 April 2021 16:09

Nine still mum on network attack details as recovery continues

By Sam Varghese

Australian media firm Nine Entertainment is continuing to stay mum as far as public statements on the network attack on its Sydney offices go. It is more or less certain now that Windows ransomware known as MedusaLocker was used in the attack.

The company's new chief executive, Mike Sneesby, who was faced by the attack on the day he walked into the job, said in part in a statement to staff on 1 April: "As a result of the efforts of 9Technology and Broadcast Operations — and the ingenuity and collaboration of teams right across the business — we are now returning a number of our core systems, with more systems anticipated to come online over the weekend.

"We anticipate that from next week, we can welcome more people back into our workplaces and we will communicate with your managers over the weekend with more details for each of our locations nationwide."

But when it comes to specifics, the company is silent even though one of its own publications, the Australian Financial Review, has reported that staff were told to look on their PCs for a file named Recovery_ Instructions.html which is the ransom note issued by the ransomware in question, MedusaLocker.

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https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/contact-books-of-australian-diplomats-hacked-in-major-phishing-scam-20210406-p57gte.html

Contact books of Australian diplomats hacked in major ‘phishing’ scam

By Anthony Galloway

April 7, 2021 — 5.00am

Senior Australian diplomats, including ambassador to the United States Arthur Sinodinos, have been caught up in a sophisticated identity theft scam in which cyber attackers impersonated them on encrypted messaging services WhatsApp and Telegram in a bid to get sensitive information from their contacts.

The Australian Federal Police is investigating the security lapses after a number of heads of mission reported experiencing suspicious activity on their phones.

The cyber scare appears to mirror the attacks on senior cabinet ministers, including Finance Minister Simon Birmingham and Health Minister Greg Hunt, whereby the attackers are impersonating the individuals on WhatsApp or Telegram by using their names and personal phone numbers and gaining access to their contact book. There is also a third federal MP who has been hit by the scam who has not been identified.

The “phishing” attacks have unsettled some senior members of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade to the extent that they are now operating on the basis their phones have been compromised. This climate of fear has been exacerbated by a number of other unrelated cyber attacks against diplomats, as well as sophisticated hacks on the computer networks of Parliament House and Nine News (publisher of this masthead).

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https://www.itnews.com.au/news/home-affairs-agrees-to-new-five-year-data-centre-deal-with-cdc-563053

Home Affairs agrees to new five-year data centre deal with CDC

By Justin Hendry on Apr 7, 2021 12:40PM

As Global Switch migration gets underway.

The Department of Home Affairs has struck a new five-year data centre hosting deal with Canberra Data Centres to support its migration from Global Switch’s Sydney-based data centre.

The $6.3 million contract, published last week, will allow the department to shift its remaining unclassified and protected-level data from the Chinese-owned facility by July 2022.

The deal comes just weeks after Home Affairs boss Mike Pezzullo revealed the department was finalising a contract with a new Australian-owned data centre provider for the planned exit.

Home Affairs is one of several federal government agencies continuing to use Global Switch, which is no longer an approved data centre provider on the data centre facilities suppliers panel.

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https://www.hinz.org.nz/news/559634/New-report-envisions-NZ-as-global-leader-in-digital-health.htm

New report envisions NZ as global leader in digital health

Wednesday, 7 April 2021  

NEWS - eHealthNews.nz editor Rebecca McBeth

New Zealand has a unique opportunity to position itself as a global leader in digital health innovation, a new report says.

The report from New Zealand Health Information Technology (NZHIT) called Hauora, Mauri Ora: Enabling a Healthier Aotearoa New Zealand, was launched by Health Minister Andrew Little in Parliament on April 7.

It makes five recommendations to “make New Zealand a world-class digital health technology exemplar” and highlights the problem that healthcare providers often see IT as a cost burden rather than an enabler or strategic investment.

In his foreword, deputy director general data and digital at the Ministry of Health Shayne Hunter says: “the day-to-day effectiveness of our health and disability system is due as much to our use of data and digital technologies, as to medical technologies, drugs and laboratory tests.

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https://www.hinz.org.nz/news/559974/Telehealth-service-opens-virtual-doors-to-care---Ardern.htm

Telehealth service opens virtual doors to care - Ardern

9 April, 2021

NEWS - eHealthNews.nz editor Rebecca McBeth

Whakarongorau Aotearoa, NZ Telehealth Services, is removing barriers to care through use of technology with the goal of achieving equity of access for all, says Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.

Speaking at the opening of the organisations’s new Auckland offices and contact centre on April 9, Ardern said Whakarongorau Aotearoa has “made it it’s mission to open virtual doors as wide as possible and ensure every door is linked to wellness”.

Ardern said the new office has capacity for 225 frontline staff to help New Zealanders when they need it most. Nationwide the team includes more than 1000 people with around 230 working from home.

She said the government’s aim is to enable all New Zealanders to live long healthy lives and to do that they have form partnerships.

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07 Apr 2021 11:12 AM AEST

STANDINGTALL: A NEW E-HEALTH EXERCISE PROGRAMME HELPS PREVENT FALLS IN OLDER PEOPLE BY UP TO 20%                     

Coinciding with Falls Awareness Month, a new study into the balance exercise program, StandingTall, has shown promising results in significantly reducing the rate of falls over two years by up to 20 per cent.

Falls in older people are common, can have serious consequences (hip fractures, placement in care facilities), are costly to the individual, society and health system, and are preventable.

Published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) this week, the two year trial of 503 Australians aged 70 years and older found the home based e-health balance exercise program, StandingTall, can provide an effective, self-managed fall prevention program for older people living independently.

Neuroscience Research Australia’s (NeuRA) Falls, Balance and Injury Research Centre is spearheading this world-leading research, with StandingTall being the only effective e-Health program in preventing falls in older people to date.

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https://www.hospitalhealth.com.au/content/technology/article/amplifying-the-signal-for-new-patient-services-311916000

Amplifying the signal for new patient services

By Dhannu Daniel, Managing Director, Management Consulting, Accenture, Global Patient Survey, patient services
Wednesday, 07 April, 2021

From diagnosis through treatment, the healthcare system can be complex and difficult to navigate as patients face hard-to-understand information and make choices regarding treatment and therapy options.

Happily, digital technologies and services have emerged to help patients adhere to treatment plans and monitor symptoms. When patients tune in to the new services on offer, adherence increases, quality of life improves, hospitalisations and emergency room visits are reduced, and survival rates rise. For example, asthma patients using a smart inhaler with sensors and GPS were able to understand and avoid environmental triggers, with a 78% reduction in rescue inhaler use and 48% more symptom-free days. Patients with cancer who used a smartphone app to monitor pain and identify urgent issues had lower pain severity and 40% fewer inpatient hospital admissions.

Evidence also shows diabetes patients who use a patient portal, especially those with multiple chronic conditions, have fewer emergency room visits and hospital stays.

Money is pouring in to the sector. Pharma companies are investing heavily in the space — the market for patient engagement solutions was worth US$8.8 billion (approx AU$11.5 billion) in 2017 and is projected to reach US$18.68 billion (approx AU$24.5 billion) in 2022, an annual growth rate of 16.2%.

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https://www.hospitalhealth.com.au/content/technology/article/unlocking-the-potential-of-iot-in-health-care-to-save-lives-1500841549

Unlocking the potential of IoT in health care to save lives

By Michael Dyson, VP of Sales, APAC at SOTI
Thursday, 01 April, 2021

With unimaginable strain being placed on healthcare systems in Australia and around the world, the healthcare industry is becoming increasingly reliant on mobile and Internet of Things (IoT) devices to revolutionise the delivery of patient care, improve health outcomes and save lives.

Advances in mobile device capabilities and healthcare organisations’ technical infrastructure have enabled medical practitioners to deploy devices to securely collect patient data, update patient records and assist in valuable research to gain deeper insights.

Connected mobile technology has also helped to deliver quality in-home care, keeping vulnerable patients away from hospitals while still under supervision. During times of extreme strain on the healthcare sector, especially when hospitals are experiencing supply shortages, ensuring patients can remain at home — while still receiving the standard of care they require — is the highest priority.

In Australia especially, attention has turned to how the country can revitalise its underinvested health service and use technology to stay ahead of the demands placed upon it by the pandemic. But with such a complex set of demands and potential solutions, just how can decision-makers unlock the potential of the IoT to improve patient care?

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07 Apr 2021 2:11 PM AEST

MEDIA ALERT

EMBARGOED: THURSDAY, APRIL 8, 2021

Launch of AUS-first digital platform to support young Aussies living with incurable movement disorder

Innovative resource to aid the 1 Aussie diagnosed every 3 hours with Young Onset Parkinson’s Disease

 

More than 20,000 young Aussies (under 50 years of age) living with an incurable movement disorder1,2 are set to benefit from the launch of an Australian-first digital support tomorrow (Thursday, April 8, 2021), ahead of World Parkinson’s Day (Sunday, April 11, 2021).

Developed as a ‘living lab’ model, the Young Onset Parkinson’s Exchange (YOP-X) is a free-to-download app and resource hub uniquely shaped by the first-hand knowledge and experiences of Australians living with Young Onset Parkinson’s Disease (YOPD).

Available to patients, their primary support people (carers), healthcare professionals and NDIS-contracted providers, the YOP-X app can be downloaded from the App Store or Google Play from tomorrow.

The one in five people who experience symptoms of Parkinson’s Disease before 50 years of age, are classified as living with YOPD.2 Over the past decade, the incidence of YOPD has increased by 40 per cent, with one Australian diagnosed every three hours.

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https://www.healthcareit.com.au/article/clinic-cloud%E2%80%99s-revamped-patient-portal-enhance-patient-experience

Clinic to Cloud’s revamped Patient Portal to enhance patient experience

Roy Chiang | 03 Apr 2021

Clinic to Cloud, a Sydney-based clinical and practice management software provider, has revamped its Patient Portal to improve patient experience.

HOW IT WORKS

Patients are now able to perform a variety of functions on the cloud-based system. These include booking appointments; viewing fees, invoices, and approved results from pathology and imaging investigations; and uploading referrals. Patients will receive reminders for their appointments to reduce no-shows, and the back-end infrastructure for the application has also been updated to ensure that patient data remains protected.

WHY IT MATTERS

In a highly contagious pandemic, healthcare providers have leveraged digital solutions such as telehealth to reduce in-person consultations. Patient portals help streamline the process as patients can perform administrative functions such as booking appointments and making payments from the comfort of their homes. Patients are also empowered to take charge of their own health.

THE LARGER TREND

Healthcare organisations have been leveraging patient portals to streamline digital solutions for patients. For example, in 2020, digital health company Zesty announced a partnership with the Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust (RWT) in England’s West Midlands to introduce a patient portal as part of a push for the use of digital.

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https://www.afr.com/companies/telecommunications/ex-nbn-co-exec-warns-accc-decision-could-stymie-competition-20210329-p57eu5

Ex-NBN Co exec warns ACCC decision could stymie competition

Lucas Baird Reporter

Apr 6, 2021 – 12.00am

A new draft determination by the competition regulator could protect NBN Co from rivals in the residential market for at least the next five years, and possibly even after the highly anticipated privatisation of the national broadband network, a former NBN Co insider has warned.

The federal government-owned entity cleared the first hurdle towards privatisation in December when Communications Minister Paul Fletcher declared the core infrastructure complete.

The remaining hurdles include a review of any sale by the Productivity Commission, a probe of the review by a joint Parliamentary committee, and a sign-off from the Finance Minister.

But ex-NBN Co chief technology officer Gary McLaren says a privatised NBN could still be protected by regulations requiring residential super-fast fibre broadband operators to offer a wholesale product at predetermined prices and terms.

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https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-america/tantalising-results-of-two-experiments-could-break-the-known-laws-of-physics-20210408-p57hcq.html

‘Tantalising’ results of two experiments could break the known laws of physics

By Seth Borenstein

April 8, 2021 — 2.50am

Preliminary results from two experiments suggest something could be wrong with the basic way physicists think the universe works, a prospect that has the field of particle physics both baffled and thrilled.

The tiniest particles aren’t quite doing what is expected of them when spun around two different long-running experiments in the United States and Europe. The confounding results – if proven right – reveal major problems with the rulebook physicists use to describe and understand how the universe works at the subatomic level.

Theoretical physicist Matthew McCullough of CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, said untangling the mysteries could “take us beyond our current understanding of nature”.

The rulebook, called the Standard Model, was developed about 50 years ago. Experiments performed over decades affirmed over and again that its descriptions of the particles and the forces that make up and govern the universe were pretty much on the mark. Until now.

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Enjoy!

David.

Sunday, April 11, 2021

It Really Is Time To See The ADHA Take Its Foot Off The Throat Of Digital Health in Australia!

 This commentary appeared a day or so ago.

9 April 2021

A certain digital behemoth is blocking innovation

Comment  MyHealthRecord

By Jeremy Knibbs

Steve Posnack describes himself as “the No 1 No 2 digital health policy development and implementation staffer in the US”.

His role, as the deputy national coordinator for Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONCHIT), in the US, reports directly to a serious political minder appointed by the ruling party of the day.

Yesterday he officially got his new boss from the Democrats, and while Posnack is that sort of refreshing intelligence that can somehow keep you onside regardless of the politics in play, you get a distinct feeling of energy and optimism that is perhaps a little more than his everyday exuberance for his work (of which he always has a lot) and something to do with the Trump regime moving on (for now anyway).

Posnack’s job – how he’s managed it in the past 10 years, who he reports to – should inform how Australia might better go about converting some pretty robust thinking on digital health in this country into, first, meaningful policy and then successful implementation.

His equivalent in Australia might have been seen, until recently perhaps, as the CEO of our Australian Digital Health Agency (ADHA).

But there are some important differences. Posnack reports directly to a powerful political figure that can get things done when needed (this person pretty much has the President’s) and who intimately understands the power of properly digitally transformed health. In contrast, the ADHA CEO reports to someone in the Department of Health (DoH) who reports to someone else, and then eventually to Dr Brendan Murphy (DoH secretary), who of course reports to the federal health minister.

A lot can and does get lost in translation in that chain of communication.

This goes a long way to understanding that while the US health system is largely an eclectic mess created by vested interests in private-, public-, federal- and state-based funding, with the resultant interoperability issues at a multiple greater than Australia, a lot more fundamental change is being executed in the US system than Australia in terms of digital health.

Yeah, the US government is orders of magnitude better than us in understanding and developing meaningful facilitation of fundamental technologies that are going to make our entire healthcare system a lot safer, less expensive to run and more efficient. That’s not what any minister is going to hear from senior health bureaucrats and certainly not from the leadership of ADHA.

The US doesn’t have a better health system, sure, but on any ranking of bang for buck in moving the dial on technology in health that works for patients and doctors, they are way ahead of us and gathering speed rapidly. We are stuck and starting to go backwards.

A key example of fundamental, meaningful and impactful change in the US is a piece of legislation introduced five years ago that demanded that healthcare providers, suppliers and tech vendors end ‘information blocking’ in the sector.

Information blocking is when healthcare vendors and service providers deliberately prevent healthcare data sharing in order to retain commercial advantage – literally, you can’t go across the street to another hospital because they’ll never be able to get your data and work out what’s going on. The blocking has been at the vendor level (if I’m Cerner, two systems in two hospitals across the street from each other is better than one in money terms every day) and because of the unique private insurance system in the US, which controls much health provision, at the provider level you want to do everything to prevent losing a customer (if you leave me, your data won’t come too, and that is going to cost you a fortune as a patient).

As well as Posnack getting a new boss, that legislation formally came into play yesterday in that yesterday was the deadline when every provider and vendor had to have their act together on having systems that were open enough to allow smooth transfer of their important patient data.

Posnack has been one of the major people overseeing the introduction of the legislation, and he may be the lead on investigating any complaints from interested parties (often patient advocate groups) who suspect blocking is still going on (which it will be in spades).

The change is important globally as the stance of the US government has deeply affected the major US-based EMR vendors – groups such as Cerner, EPIC and Allscript – all of whom operate globally and in some way or another in Australia, and all of whom have, as a result, put Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) interfaces  (an emerging and powerful web-based healthcare data sharing protocol) on their products and sometimes even spruik the idea of open APIs throughout the digital health ecosystem.

Past and present leaders of the ADHA might like to argue that Australia’s equivalent to the ONC’s success with anti-blocking legislation is the MyHealthRecord (MHR).

But there is virtually no comparison.

The MHR is an infrastructure project that was politically motivated as a show pony project by a health minister many years ago, is infrastructure built and run by the government, was never a future-proofed technology solution, and was out of date as a means of platforming better sharing of data in the system up to 10 years ago.

The MHR has absorbed vast sums of money (now more than $2 billion), achieved virtually nothing in terms of substantive advances in efficiency and patient safety, and faces an uncertain future as a centralised honeypot of disorganised patient data, the principles and structure of which now fly in the face of how distributed data technology, open APIs and effective secure sharing of healthcare data in the future should be facilitated.

Already we see that mobile technology can more securely and effectively store and share a patient’s healthcare data, as they need it, and as they want it.

There are pages and pages more here:

https://medicalrepublic.com.au/a-certain-digital-behemoth-is-blocking-innovation/43256

It is not hard to make the need for major change pretty clear.

The present ADHA strategy argues that the #myHR is the central part of the forward direction for Digital Health in Australia.

This is clearly bunkum! If the #myHR were so wonderful we would not be seeing:

1. Weekly distorted press releases from the ADHA claiming all sorts of benefits that are not supported by any evidence.

2. Statistics outlining the size of the ageing document pile while providing no information of what might be considered ‘meaningful clinical use’ of the system and evidence of real clinical impact.

3. Continued failure by clinicians to use the system other than at a rate that will attract the generous ePIP payments.

4. Surveys showing patients use doctors and nurses to guide their clinical course and interventions and a pretty much total avoidance of the #myHR by the vast majority of the general public!

The system is costing millions per year to operate and there are plans to spend vastly more on upgrading a system which – even following an upgrade – will not be useful to doctors or patients in any meaningful way.

What is needed is a totally new strategy that does not have an elderly clunky idea at its centre and which supports the actual information needs of patients and clinicians as well  as diversion of the funding presently wasted on the #myHR to initiatives which will really help and make a difference inside and outside the public sector! Modern standards-based approaches with API's etc are a given were appropriate.

It really is that simple. I really hope that ADHA might actually be up to the challenge but I suspect we are sadly going to see more ‘waste and mismanagement’ into the future.

What do you think? It is pretty clear from the very long article cited above that its author is pretty deeply frustrated just as I am as are many who read here!

David.

AusHealthIT Poll Number 574 – Results – 11th April, 2021.

 Here are the results of the poll.

Overall How Would You Assess The Progress And Performance Of The ADHA Since The Appointment Of The New CEO?

Improving 5% (4)

Stable 25% (20)

Worsening 53% (43)

I Have No Idea 17% (14)

Total votes: 81

It seems that most readers do not see much in the way of positive improvement with the ADHA under the new CEO. The results suggest she needs to do better with over half seeing things as worsening!

Any insights on the poll welcome as a comment, as usual.

A pretty good number of votes.  

It must also have been a very hard question as 14/81 readers were not sure how to respond.

Again, many, many thanks to all those who voted!  

David.