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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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$4bn Twitter flutter adds to the Elon Musk mysteries
The Economist
10:51PM April 8, 2022
What will he do with it? That was the big question after Elon Musk let it be known on April 4 that he had amassed a stake of 9.2 per cent in Twitter, making him the social-media firm’s largest shareholder.
Will the world’s richest man buy more shares or even take Twitter private? Will the boss of Tesla take a hands-on role in Twitter’s management? Will the libertarian troll push to bring back Donald Trump, kicked off the platform after inciting an assault on the Capitol in January 2021? Speculation mounted after Twitter said a day later that Musk would join its board.
As is his wont, Musk will reveal his plans in his own time and probably in his own tweets to the 80 million people who follow him on the platform (not many fewer than followed Trump before he got the boot).
In posts published before he announced the investment, he complained that Twitter “serves as the de facto public town square” but fails “to adhere to free-speech principles”. He urged the company to open up the algorithm that decides which tweets users see. In light of his well-documented sympathies for cryptocurrencies and their underlying technology, the blockchain, he could try to turn Twitter into a decentralised service controlled by users.
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https://www.zdnet.com/article/australias-skyguardian-drones-shot-down-by-spicy-cybers/
Australia's SkyGuardian drones shot down by spicy cybers
Most of the funding for the AU$9.9 billion REDSPICE cyber program comes from cancelled projects, including the air force's armed drone capability and the navy's Attack-class submarines.
Written by Stilgherrian ,
on April 1, 2022 | Topic: Security
The Australian government has cancelled the SkyGuardian armed drone program for the Royal Australian Air Force. The funding is being redirected to the newly-announced REDSPICE cybersecurity and intelligence program.
REDSPICE, the Resilience, Effects, Defence, Space, Intelligence, Cyber and Enablers program, is a flagship component of the federal Budget announced on Tuesday.
The program aims to double the staffing levels of the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) over the next four years, creating some 1,900 new jobs. The total program budget is AU$9.9 billion over the next decade, boosting both offensive and defensive cyber capabilities.
"This is the biggest ever investment in Australia's cyber preparedness," said Treasurer Josh Frydenberg.
However in Senate Estimates on Friday, defence officials confirmed that little of this is new money.
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RBA says cyber attacks more frequent and sophisticated
1:30PM April 8, 2022
Cyber attacks have become more frequent and sophisticated, with 55 per cent of reported data breaches of local financial institutions found to be malicious, according to the Reserve Bank.
In its Financial Stability Review, released on Friday, the central bank said a key concern of authorities was that a significant cyber incident could have a broader impact on a large part of the financial system.
“Cyber attacks are more likely than other types of incidents to be systemic: a well-resourced and sophisticated adversary seeking to cause widespread distress will actively exploit cyber vulnerabilities to maximise the impact of their attack (including by affecting multiple institutions),” the RBA said.
“Cyber incidents that impair the confidentiality of IT systems seem less likely to cause systemic stress, but they could lead to severe reputational damage for the institutions affected.”
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https://www.theweeklysource.com.au/check-your-it-currency-and-strategy/
Check your IT currency and strategy
Published on April 7, 2022
Annual Aged Care IT Update
Seven minute presentation on the opportunities and new solutions that Telstra Health, Australia’s largest aged care technology provider, identifies as important for CEOs and CIOs to be across. Presentation at the LEADERS SUMMIT by Michael Donnelly, Head of Aged and Disability at Telstra Health.
IT concerns and how to scope IT projects
20 minute discussion at the LEADERS SUMMIT between Renzo Mostacci, CIO at Uniting NSW & ACT, and Peter Gunn, IT consultant and director at BlueCross Aged Care. Insights into IT and workforce retention plus achieving successful IT project strategies.
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https://psychology.org.au/event/23082
Introduction to My Health Record for Psychologists
1.50 CPD Hours APS Professional development CPD | Event number: 23082 ADHA Propaganda
Overview
My Health Record is a secure online summary of an individual’s health information and is available to all Australians. Healthcare providers authorised by their healthcare organisation can access My Health Record to view and add patient health information.
The Australian Digital Health Agency will be delivering an interactive webinar outlining how My Health Record can support psychologists and their clients, and will include:
· an overview of My Health Record and benefits,
· privacy and security features,
· consumer privacy, access and controls,
· how health professionals can connect to My Health Record,
· resources, and
· an interactive Q&A session.
Level of learning
Foundational
Duration of access
This webinar will be recorded. Access to the recording and presenter slides is for 12 months from the date of confirmed registration.
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https://www.nationaltribune.com.au/answers-to-your-my-health-record-questions/
Answers to your My Health Record questions
· Health ADHA Propaganda
· 8 Apr 2022 3:39 pm AEST
COTA Australia has been working with the Australian Digital Health Agency to support older Australian’s use of My Health Record. My Health Record provides a centralised record that you can see of your medical details, that have been uploaded by you, your health providers and/or Medicare. It is a valuable tool to ensure that your medical history is documented and stored in a place that is accessible by you and any nominated and authorised representative/s or medical professionals, to guide decisions regarding your health care. This is particularly important in scenarios where you may not be in the position to speak for yourself. It also saves having to repeat everything to different people.
We have been talking to the community and hearing experiences that some of you have had using My Health Record. Most of you agree this is a valuable service to document your medical history and provide an effective way of viewing your history in one place and at a time that is convenient for you. Through these conversations, there were common questions or discussion points that were raised. Below we ask these questions to the Australian Digital Health Agency and share their response, as we know that others would benefit from hearing the answers.
Who has access to the information on My Health Record?
Apart from you, the only people who can view or access your My Health Record are:
- Your healthcare providers (e.g. GPs, specialists or hospital staff)
- People you invite to help you manage your record (nominated representatives)
- People who manage your record for you if you are not able to (authorised representatives)
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https://wildhealth.net.au/budgets-digital-health-strategy-holds-gps-hostage/
4 April 2022
Budget’s digital health strategy holds GPs hostage
There’s a bit of an irony in that much of what might really create a better future for general practice, and from this, the whole healthcare system, is not the 10 Year Plan for Primary Care (for now we can forget it anyway, thanks to this budget, which has removed all funding from its key planks), but getting our collective act together on digital health technology in Australia.
If you flip through the budget looking for items of digital health progress – as with primary care, there isn’t much to speak of – you can quickly piece together a much greater tragedy for general practice and our healthcare system overall than a disarmed 10 Year Plan.
If you pull at one or two loose budget threads, you can actually unravel what is a giant train wreck for us all.
In the budget fine print, $3 million was set aside to somehow connect the My Health Record system to MyGP, the system by which GPs would be able to enrol, register and monitor their patients to their practices, moving forward.
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7 April 2022
Liberal government decides it might just nationalise our digital health industry
Strange thing to do just prior to an election, but a tender just released by the Department of Health for the future running of the electronic scripts ecosystem in Australia technically outlines a plan to nationalise one and perhaps even a few of our privately (and well) run digital health companies in Australia.
Just when you thought things couldn’t get much stranger in how much micro-control the Department of Health (DoH) seeks to exert over every part of our healthcare system (GP education and training, PHN influence and power, rural health doctor placements, to name a few).
Just six weeks out from a federal election, the Department have put out a tender which overtly expresses the intent of the government to exert near complete control of two well running and successful private digital health companies, and with them, a crucial and evolving piece of our digital health infrastructure; electronic scripts.
You’d have thought that a Liberal government seeking to radically rewrite a pricing deal and appropriate all the IP and commercial value of one (or both) of two long running privately held eScript exchanges might be a risky play in the run up to an election.
The idea that a federal government department is setting out to, in essence, have a go at nationalising a few key private companies that run a major part of our e-health infrastructure, should scare the whole business sector – not just those in health tech.
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https://news.wapha.org.au/governance-of-primary-health-care-data-on-primary-health-insights/
Governance of primary health care data on Primary Health Insights
6 Apr 2022
In an age where data can be used to great benefit, it is helpful for GPs and general practices to understand how patients’ and practices’ sensitive data is kept safe and their privacy protected.
Data shared by practices holding Data Sharing Agreements with WA Primary Health Alliance is stored on Primary Health Insights, the data storage and analytics platform built by 27 of the 31 PHNs that provides leading edge data security and has robust data governance embedded within its processes and structures.
Primary Health Insights is characterised by its individually secured ‘lock boxes’ for each PHN, where data is stored, analysed and reports generated using tools from within the platform. Similarly secured ‘collaboration zones’ are where PHNs can choose to share specific data sets to generate insights into focused areas of health care, all under strict data governance rules.
Further information about Primary Health Insights and how it works can be found here.
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Thursday, 07 April 2022 11:11
Australians want more government digital services and are comfortable with personalised artificial intelligence: survey
There is a large and growing demand for government services across Australia with the public comfortable using personalised artificial intelligence, according to the inaugural Publicis Sapient Digital Citizen survey.
Australians want to use more digital government services (92%) and artificial intelligence generated services (78%).
The survey polled 5,000 respondents in Australia and examined at people’s usage, experience, and perspectives on engaging with government bodies through digital services.
The report highlights that 83% of Australians are open to digital services and 78% are comfortable with government bodies that personalise their services to cater to users.
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You’re still being tracked on the internet, just in a different way
By Brian X. Chen and Daisuke Wakabayashi
April 7, 2022 — 11.15am
The internet industry shuddered last year when Apple introduced privacy measures for the iPhone that threatened to upend online tracking and cripple digital advertising. Google pledged similar privacy actions.
But in less than a year, another type of internet tracking has started taking over. And it is having the unintended effect of reinforcing the power of some of tech’s biggest titans.
The shift suggests that gathering people’s online data for targeted advertising is not going away. That has implications for how companies make money online and how the internet operates. It also underlines the advantages built up by some of the largest digital platforms.
“They’ve entrenched their own power,” Eric Seufert, a media strategist and the author of Mobile Dev Memo, a blog about mobile advertising, said of Apple and Google.
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Global semiconductor chip shortage to drag on until 2025 with a staggered recovery, says Bain & Company
8:31AM April 5, 2022
The global semiconductor shortage will continue to cause billions more in lost production of cars, trucks, PCs and consumer electronics and will linger to the mid decade. There seems little respite in the short term with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine impacting the availability of Neon, a seminar by Bain & Company has been told.
The global management consulting firm expects some chip shortages to continue until 2025, but there was some short term hope, said Anne Hoecker , Bain & Company Silicon Valley partner. “We think improvements will start to be seen in the second half of this year, but it’s going to be a bumpy road into 2023 and longer,” she said.
The firm identified four root causes of the shortage, each impacting different types of chips in different ways.
Shortages of computers, gaming consoles, wired communications and servers were likely to persist with the supply of “advanced substrates” remaining in trouble into 2025.
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eRequesting Uploading Pathology Results to My Health Record
4 April 2022
ADHA Propaganda
Medical practices using Australian Clinical Laboratories and Sonic pathology (Douglass Hanly Moir Pathology and Southern IML Pathology) can assist their patients and other health professionals to access pathology reports in My Health Record.
If your practice is using compatible version of Best Practice, Medical Director and Zedmed (ACL only), you can contact your pathology lab and request to have eRequesting and pathology report upload progressed.
Find the list of compatible clinical software and contact details for Australian Clinical Laboratories, Douglass Hanly Moir Pathology and Southern IML here.
Please contact digitalhealth@cesphn.com.au for additional information.
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https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=2d38b864-3c81-48ea-9b7d-dedf537f5be2
Reflections Data Breach notification in Australia - from response to accountability and cyber risk management
KPMG Law Elly Krambias and Veronica Scott
Australia March 31 2022
Data breaches and their impact on individuals and organisations cannot be eliminated. The cyber threat environment continues to evolve. Data collection, use and sharing is now considered critical to innovation and economic prosperity and it is also increasingly driving M&A activity. Trust, security and cyber risk management are therefore fundamental to this. In Australia, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) publishes regular insights from data breaches reported under the Notifiable Data Breaches (NDB) scheme in the Privacy Act 1988 which is now 4 years old. The purpose of the scheme is to encourage secure and safe information management, incentivise breach responses and assessment and enable individuals to recover from the harms. Insights from reporting also helps organisations understand root causes, where the risks continue to be and the regulator’s expectations about how compliance is being met.
Notifiable data breaches vs privacy breaches
These are two different types of regulatory breaches that affect personal information and they can often get confused. A privacy breach may be the unauthorised use or collection or retention of personal information or failure to take reasonable steps to protect it, in breach of the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs). A privacy breach could lead to a data breach. Whether that data breach (which is when personal information is subject to unauthorised access or disclosure) is notifiable, depends on a number of thresholds being met. Importantly there are positive obligations to investigate and assess data breaches to determine this.
Australia -Latest insights
Many jurisdictions like Australia (which was one of the first to introduce a national scheme) now have mandatory notification regimes which require breaches that reach certain thresholds to be notified. The thresholds vary (for example the EU’ GDPR has a lower reporting threshold than the NDB Scheme) and this impacts the number of incidents being reported. A total of 900 notifiable (or eligible) data breaches were reported in Australia in 2021. The OAIC’s latest bi-annual report for the period of July to December 2021 reported that 464 data breach notifications were received, an increase of 6% on the previous 6 months. Data breaches attributed to human error saw a dramatic increase of 43%, but the overall trends and takeaways have remained largely consistent over the year - see our article here for insights on the period, January to June 2021. The good news is that the annual number reported is down from 1057 in 2020, but still remains higher than 782 reported in 2019.
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Digitalisation is not just a trend, it’s the only way forward
RALPH HAMERS
12:00AM April 4, 2022
Digitalisation is often described as a trend – one happening across many industries and locations, but a trend nonetheless. This suggests digital transformation is a line of development, a currently popular growth method that may one day be replaced with the next best thing. But, in reality, digitalisation is much bigger than that. It’s the only way forward.
Let me give you an example.
Development of new sectors of the economy such as consumer, healthcare, education and information technology is a big component of China’s national strategy. This will involve a significant wealth shift – a move away from manufacturing towards a services-led growth model. And that will mean a huge uptick in new economy entrepreneurs and institutions. These entrepreneurial and institutional clients have very specific needs. They need access to capital markets which large financial institutions can provide. They need to get financial advice on the go and with regular updates. They need to transact money or process loans quickly and from whatever device they have on hand. They need to be matched with potential investors and opportunities before they even know where to look for them. In short, they need services that can only be provided by a digitalised financial enterprise.
That is a huge opportunity. Currently, China’s services sector represents only about 52 per cent of GDP, compared with countries such as the US where it represents about 87 per cent. So it is set to grow, a lot. Any global financial enterprise that ignores the needs of these new sectors of the economy and doesn’t evolve its business and operations to meet them will lose out in terms of current clients as well as potential ones.
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Online safety watchdog wants big tech companies to be accountable for young people in metaverse
By Daniella White
April 3, 2022 — 5.00am
Young people are facing sexual violence in virtual worlds and big technology companies need to be held accountable for their safety, the nation’s online safety watchdog has warned.
eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant said she was fearful about the emerging technologies being developed by large corporations to power the metaverse without thinking of the safety implications and believed young people needed to be involved in online policy decisions.
The “metaverse” broadly refers to virtual worlds on the internet and can include the use of virtual reality headsets and augmented reality glasses.
“Imagine the risks to children of wearing an Oculus [virtual reality] headset where a parent can’t look over their shoulder, can’t know what they’re seeing or experiencing,” Ms Inman Grant said.
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David.
