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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! It’s 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://digitalhealth.org.au/blog/summit-success-connection-community-and-career-advancement/
Summit success: Connection, community and career advancement
Mar 1, 2022 | AIDH news, Digital Health
Over two days, from 21 to 22 February more than 850 delegates gathered in person and online to reconnect, learn and join their counterparts for the Digital Health Institute Summit in Melbourne.
From fascinating discussions on the importance of data during the pandemic to how digital health is supporting the future of wound care the latest and greatest in digital health were represented.
More than 117 speakers, 83 concurrent speakers discussed, shared and inspired delegates on all thing’s digital health.
The Summit was the first in-person event for the Institute, and we welcomed delegates from far and wide with open arms. The standout theme for the conference was the opportunity for the digital health community to reconnect.
“The Summit has been a great success in bringing the digital health community back together after years of being apart. Overwhelmingly delegates and sponsors are grateful for the opportunity to reconnect. It was great to see all the smiling faces, filled session rooms and plenty of socialising,” said AIDH CEO Dr Louise Schaper.
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eSafety outlines long list of challenges within Australia's proposed anti-trolling laws
Australia's eSafety commissioner is not sure whether social media platforms are even capable of adhering to the country's anti-trolling laws.
Written by Campbell Kwan,
on March 4, 2022 | Topic: Social Enterprise
Australia's eSafety commissioner Julia Inman Grant has expressed doubt that the federal government's proposed anti-trolling laws will be effective.
The proposed laws, currently before Parliament, seek to establish a requirement for social media service providers to have a complaints scheme in place that allows victims of defamatory comments to both make complaints and request the personal information of the maker of those comments.
Under the proposed laws, social media service providers would be liable to defamation for these types of comments if their platform does not have an appropriate complaints scheme.
In a submission to the parliamentary body currently reviewing the proposed laws, the commissioner listed out a plethora of issues, ranging from technical to unintended societal ones.
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Introduction to My Health Record for Software Developers (21 July, 2022)
Thursday, 21 July 2022 - 1:00pm to 2:00pm
Online Webinar (Note times are AEST)
The Australian Digital Health Agency is presenting a one hour introduction to integrating software with the My Health Record system.
The objective of this session is to provide participants with foundational information about the HI Service and My Health Record system.
Topics covered include:
- The Healthcare Identifier (HI) Service
- The Healthcare Identifier (HI) Service conformance
- The National Authentication Service for Health (NASH)
- Retrieve a IHI and HPI-I
- My Health Record system
- My Health Record system services
- My Health Record integration
- My Health Record views
- My Health Record conformance
- Software types
- Clinical documents
- Support and other resources
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https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=3433892e-e062-4a89-bec7-6f871c84330f
A Guide to Critical Infrastructure Assets in Australia
Australia March 1 2022
What are Critical Infrastructure Assets?
Critical Infrastructure Assets are assets classes specified in the new Australian foreign investment and security of critical infrastructure legislative regime. A critical infrastructure asset can be declared as a ‘system of national significance’ by the Minister, rendering them subject to enhanced cyber security obligations.
The new critical infrastructure assets enviroment
In recent years, Australia’s Federal Government has engaged in a continuous program of intensifying the regulation of critical infrastructure assets and the assessment and approval regime for deals involving them.
Transactions relating to assets considered critical to the Australian national interest - from energy and water assets to healthcare and financial infrastructure - are now subject to extensive scrutiny from Australia’s foreign investment regulator, while the businesses operating those assets themselves now have enhanced cyber and reporting obligations (with more obligations on the horizon).
At the same time, investors are looking for opportunities to deploy enormous pools of capital into secure assets with multi-decade horizons and infrastructure-like qualities. Traditional investment opportunities involving the passive, steady-yielding infrastructure assets that have been attractive to infrastructure and superannuation funds are increasingly rare, so those investors are moving up the risk curve to find acceptable returns while private equity funds are deploying secure asset or core-plus type strategies and meeting them in the middle. This middle ground is squarely in the zone of these critical infrastructure assets - sectors that are growing in importance and which matter profoundly to the lives of consumers.
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Getting urgent medicines in a flood zone can be a life or death challenge
Published: March 3, 2022 6.29pm AEDT
Author
Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the University of Sydney, Honorary Adjunct Research Fellow, Western Sydney University
I’m writing this from the flooded far north coast of New South Wales, where all around me people are contending with the awful and unexpected consequences of a catastrophic flood.
I have worked in rural health for a long time and this has been the worst I have experienced it. It is well established that those living in flood-prone areas often already have more financial and health issues than others.
Among those consequences is the need to manage medicines safely, and sometimes urgently find and acquire medicines you need to stay alive and healthy or keep pain at manageable levels.
The far north coast has a high population of older people, many of whom need daily medicines such as insulin to survive.
While I was picking up medicines for a family member this morning, another older person turned up at the pharmacy with a script. She was running out of her medicine today but the pharmacy did not have the required medicines left. She continued her hunt for medicines at the last pharmacy in the area we have access to.
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Telecommunications, Media and Technology (TMT) Law Update – Volume 45
Judgements
AFP’s use of facial recognition service provider found to be a privacy breach
On 26 November 2021, the Privacy Commissioner determined that the Australian Federal Police (AFP) interfered with the privacy of individuals whose personal information was disclosed to a third party facial recognition service provider: Commissioner Initiated Investigation into the Australian Federal Police (Privacy) [2021] AICmr 74. As we have previously reported, in an earlier decision the Commissioner found that Clearview AI had infringed a range of Australian Privacy Principles (APPs) by scraping individuals’ biometric information from the internet and disclosing it through a facial recognition tool. Relatedly, Clearview AI provided free trials of the facial recognition tool to several members of the Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation (ACCCE), an organisation led by the AFP, after ACCCE members became aware that other law enforcement agencies had used the facial recognition tool to successfully identify several individuals. Following this, the trial participants uploaded various images to the facial recognition tool, including images of possible persons of interest, an alleged offender, victims, members of the public and members of the AFP. The Commissioner was satisfied that images uploaded to and disclosed by that tool, were “personal information” as defined in the Privacy Act. Given the AFP’s use of the tool was a high privacy risk project under the Australian Government Agencies Privacy Code (the Code), the AFP’s failure to conduct a Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) resulted in a breach of clause 12 of the Code. Additionally, the Commissioner was satisfied that, by failing to implement a centralised system to accurately record its use of the tool, provide appropriate training, possess written policies specifically identifying the privacy risks of using new technologies to handle personal information, and conduct a PIA, the AFP breached APP 1.2 by failing to take reasonable steps to implement practices, procedures and systems relating to its use of the tool that would ensure it complied with clause 12 of the Code. The Commissioner ordered that an independent review of the changes made to the AFP’s relevant practices, procedures and systems since the trial period be conducted.
Entry on #myHR also towards end.
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Australia's health system needs to digitise with a purpose, says industry report
While there is overwhelming consumer support for a digital future, there are still people being left behind.
By Adam Ang
March 02, 2022 05:21 AM
An industry paper calls for a reimagined health system in Australia and an improvement in its sustainability through purpose-driven digital transformation.
The white paper, titled Australia’s Health Reimagined, is a Digital Health Cooperative Research Centre (DHCRC) project delivered by professional services provider Deloitte, Perth-based Curtin University, and the Consumers Health Forum of Australia.
FINDINGS
The recently published paper is based on a review of recent literature and the Reimagining Healthcare consumer survey which collected responses from nearly 2,000 Australian consumers last year.
Findings from the comprehensive consumer survey showed that about seven in 10 Australians are willing and ready to use virtual health services, such as accessing online health coaches and using digital navigators and home-based diagnostic technologies. More than 80% are up for sharing and owning their health data in a digitally-enabled health system.
While this might indicate a strong push for a digital future, there is still a risk of digital exclusion for the remaining portion of participants who said they have trouble accessing telehealth. Overlooking such a risk, the paper said, will "perpetuate a digital divide" if not properly managed.
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https://medicalrepublic.com.au/virtual-care-flies-high-at-digital-health-summit-2022/64091
2 March 2022
Virtual care flies high at IRL health conference
podcast Technology The Tea Room
More GPs attended the Digital Health Summit this year than ever before – maybe because it was the first face-to-face event for many since the pandemic began.
Dr Amandeep Hansra was one of those delegates and she shares on this week’s podcast what was hot at the summit from a GP’s perspective.
Dr Hansra is well placed to comment on the future of virtual care for general practice, as well as what’s new for GPs in medical tech. She is the clinical reference lead for the Australian Digital Health Authority, is one of Telstra’s Brilliant Women in Digital Health 2021 and she has nearly two decades of clinical experience.
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As the tanks rolled into Ukraine, so did malware. Then Microsoft entered the war
David E. Sanger, Julian E. Barnes and Kate Conger
Updated Mar 2, 2022 – 8.03am, first published at 7.50am
Washington | Last Wednesday, a few hours before Russian tanks began rolling into Ukraine, alarms went off inside Microsoft’s Threat Intelligence Centre, warning of a never-before-seen piece of “wiper” malware that appeared aimed at the country’s government ministries and financial institutions.
Within three hours, Microsoft threw itself into the middle of a ground war in Europe — from 5,500 miles away. The threat centre, north of Seattle, had been on high alert, and it quickly picked apart the malware, named it “FoxBlade” and notified Ukraine’s top cyberdefence authority. Within three hours, Microsoft’s virus detection systems had been updated to block the code, which erases — “wipes” — data on computers in a network.
Then Tom Burt, the senior Microsoft executive who oversees the company’s effort to counter major cyberattacks, contacted Anne Neuberger, the White House’s deputy national security adviser for cyber- and emerging technologies. Neuberger asked if Microsoft would consider sharing details of the code with the Baltics, Poland and other European nations, out of fear that the malware would spread beyond Ukraine’s borders, crippling the military alliance or hitting West European banks.
Before midnight in Washington, Neuberger had made introductions — and Microsoft had begun playing the role that Ford Motor Co. did in World War II, when the company converted automobile production lines to make Sherman tanks.
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https://www.ausdoc.com.au/news/how-fitibit-detected-normally-difficult-diagnosis
How a Fitibit detected a normally difficult diagnosis
The patient sought medical help after noticing a 50% increase in her resting heart rate, reveals Swiss case report
1st March 2022
A Fitbit smartwatch helped detect a patient’s coronary giant cell arteritis, after it revealed her heart rate was persistently elevated, Swiss doctors report.
The physically active 57-year-old became concerned after her baseline resting heart rate (RHR) increased from 55 to 75 bpm, according to the healthcare application on her Fitbit.
She also had unexplained fatigue, myalgia without stiffness in the neck and shoulder girdle, intermittent night sweats, weight loss of 4kg and had noticed exertional dyspnoea over the past three months.
The patient was initially treated by her GP, with an ECG, echocardiogram and stress test ruling out a cardiac cause.
The GP also ordered a chest CT to exclude pulmonary embolism and lung cancer, which was reported as normal; however, a mild wall thickening of the aorta was missed at the time.
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Hacktivists back Ukraine to wage cyber offensive against Russia
March 1, 2022
Dark web hacktivists including the Anonymous collective have thrown their full support behind Ukraine, attacking Russian government websites, banking and transport services, media outlets and infrastructure.
Posting on Twitter, Anonymous claims to have successfully hacked and taken offline more than 300 Russian government, state media and banking websites over the past 48 hours.
Anonymous is a loosely affiliated collective of hackers whose membership is transient and global.
Hackers typically use “distributed denial-of-service” attacks that overwhelm websites with huge volumes of internet traffic.
The official Kremlin website taken down at the weekend remained offline on Monday, as did the Russian Duma (parliament) and ministry of defence, and some other Russian and Belarus government agencies. Anonymous said its actions were directed against the Russian government, not its people.
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NewsGuard tracks Putin’s false narratives
4:00AM February 24, 2022
Russia is pumping out more than a dozen false narratives through state-sponsored news sites to justify its invasion of Ukraine.
News credibility rating agency NewsGuard tracks the veracity of web-based news sites and digitally categorises misinformation, whether it be from large major daily news sites or smaller privately sponsored online publications that often have unspecified ownership.
NewsGuard completed an analysis of Russia’s news misinformation as it heightened in recent months. Reports ranged from blatant false assertions and false narratives, with misquotes of officials, to the reporting of false claims with quotes from little known sources.
Russia was also homing in on ethnic and racial issues, which can play out in Russia and Ukraine where there are long-held historic tensions.
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Australia mulls new laws to tackle tech giants Google and Apple
Tech giants Google and Apple are facing potential new laws to curb the power of their app store monopolies – and their potential dominance in the metaverse – with Australia’s consumer watchdog flagging reforms as momentum to rein in the digital platforms builds globally.
The ACCC, which successfully introduced world-first media bargaining code last year under outgoing chair Rod Sims, is now mulling a possible new regulatory framework it says would promote competition and reduce consumer harms from the tech giants.
The watchdog is halfway through its five-year digital platforms inquiry.
On the table are new rules that would force Apple and Google to allow third-party payments on their App Stores, limit the fees that tech giants can collect from sellers and allow users to change default apps on their devices.
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https://medicalrepublic.com.au/data-is-the-key-to-handling-future-variants/63726
25 February 2022
Data is the key to handling future variants
Throughout the pandemic, it’s been extremely difficult for people seeking reassurance, information or care to navigate the ever-changing restrictions and guidelines around testing, isolation and treatment.
Omicron has created an extremely challenging situation at a time when healthcare demand already outstrips capacity, with overburdened nurses, staff shortages and a lack of beds. The more-infectious variant highlighted these constraints and our health system’s limited ability to scale. While thankfully we have passed the peak of the Omicron wave, the need to be able to increase capacity when the next wave hits isn’t going to go away.
Some hospitals in Australia and overseas have stood out as exemplars of scalability. These systems have used data and remote monitoring technologies to ensure effective management of covid cases, and in doing so, have provided empathetic care while protecting their staff from burnout. Armed with these technologies, hospitals have helped frontline workers focus care on the highest-risk patients, manage the supply surge, appropriately manage labour resources, and ultimately, create a sustainable course.
Vast amounts of data on covid patients have been collected around the world. Insights from this data are being used by hospitals to highlight high-risk patients and direct resources to those likely to need it most. For patients who are managing well and don’t need to occupy a hospital bed, hospitals are incorporating technologies such as business process automation and remote monitoring to communication with patients and monitor their progress remotely.
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David.
