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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://www.innovationaus.com/bunnings-kmart-dig-in-on-facial-recognition-as-scrutiny-grows/
Bunnings, Kmart dig in on facial recognition as scrutiny grows
Joseph
Brookes
Senior Reporter
30 June 2022
The Good Guys will “pause” its use of facial recognition technology following an investigation and subsequent complaint to the privacy regulator by a consumer group. But Bunnings and Kmart are digging in on their use of the controversial technology.
The three retailers have been using facial recognition to identify customers as part of security systems, which they say reduce theft and aggressive behaviour in stores.
Consumer group Choice exposed the practice as part of a wider investigation of Australian retailers’ use of the technology. Choice has alleged it was a breach of Australian privacy law in a complaint to the regulator.
The regulator, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC), is now obliged to investigate the matter, and has already found against another retailer in a separate case privacy experts say is similar.
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https://www.innovationaus.com/wa-future-health-fund-seeks-new-research-initiatives/
WA future health fund seeks new research initiatives
Brandon
How
Reporter
27 June 2022
The latest program under the Western Australian government’s Future Health Research and Innovation fund calls on members of the community to propose their own research and innovation initiative.
Through the Co-Funding Partnership Program, organisations can propose the establishment of new health and medical research and innovation initiatives. If approved, between $500,000 and $1 million will be committed by the state government to set up the initiative, so long as the funding is matched by a partner.
Some examples of initiatives highlighted by the state government include the co-design of new grant programs, research or innovation fellowships, and infrastructure support for medical research or innovation. The Co-FPP also permits the proposal for ‘untied partner funding’, with the design of any resulting co-funded program left to the Research and Innovation Office within WA Health.
Research translation is key
Proposals must be from an eligible funding partner, such as a non-government organisation, a charitable organisation or the private sector. Expressions of interest can be submitted at any time with the Co-FPP currently expected to be open on a continuous basis. Assessments of the expressions of interest will be undertaken throughout the year.
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Post Roe, women in America are right to be concerned about digital surveillance – and it’s not just period-tracking apps
· Melissa Sweet
· Uri Gal
· Wednesday, June 29, 2022
Digital surveillance is a threat to public health in many ways, and the United States ruling against abortion rights is a powerful reminder of an urgent need for legislative reform to better protect the community, according to Uri Gal, Professor in Business Information Systems at the University of Sydney.
This article was first published at The Conversation.
Uri Gal writes:
The reversal of Roe v. Wade by the American Supreme court last week is a watershed moment in American politics. The ruling withdraws constitutional protections for abortion rights and sends the issue to the states, around half of which are expected to ban abortions.
Unlike the last time abortion was illegal in the United States, almost half a century ago, we now live in an era of pervasive digital surveillance enabled by the internet and mobile phones. Digital data may well be used to identify, track, and incriminate women who seek abortion.
Over the past 20 years or so, large tech companies, mobile app operators, data brokers, and online ad companies have built a comprehensive system to collect, analyse, and share huge amounts of data. Companies can follow our every movement, profile our behaviour, and snoop on our emotions.
Until now, this system has mostly been used to sell us things. But following last week’s ruling, many are concerned that personal data could be used to surveil pregnancies, shared with law enforcement agencies, or sold to vigilantes.
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https://digitalhealth.org.au/blog/co-design-what-does-it-really-look-like-in-practice/
Co-design: What does it really look like in practice?
Jun 30, 2022 | AIDH NSW, Co-design, Community Chats
People often have an image in their minds of what co-design is and what it looks like. That visual is often of a creative setting with whiteboards, or perhaps in the minds of the more tech-savvy, touch screens, with silicon-valley-styled professionals debating ideas and moving objects around a mind map or user interface design on the screen. Perhaps even a small buffet of drinks and snacks somewhere in the corner of that setting. In essence, that general image is closer to something you might see around the offices of the high-flying giants of Apple, Google, or Microsoft.
Firstly, what is Co-design?
Co-design actively involves multiple stakeholders (internal and external) in the planning to improve systems and services (Alberta Health Services, 2020). It is a participatory, reflective, and adaptive process centring on participants as experts. It decentralises decision-making and power to facilitate more transformative change (Sahagun & Holley, 2018). The approach creates environments and develops solutions that are more responsive and appropriate to the needs of all stakeholders. In “true co-design” stakeholders (Alberta Health Services, 2020):
- participate, as equals, in decision-making
- are involved in all stages of the co-design process
The concept of co-design is not new. It has been around for decades, albeit in different shapes and forms, and its methodologies have evolved and even multiplied over time. It has been tried and tested in clinical settings in Australia to varying degrees of uptake and success, but has often battled the rigidity, complexity, and bureaucratic nature of the healthcare industry, not to mention resource scarcity.
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https://digitalhealth.org.au/blog/documentation-within-electronic-records/
Documentation within electronic records
Jun 30, 2022 | Community Chats, Community of Practice, Data, Digital Health, eHealth, Innovation, Nursing & Midwifery Informatics
The implementation of digital records into healthcare settings has led to significant changes in the way patient information is recorded, stored and used. The result of this can have a wide variety of implications for healthcare professionals, predominantly on what and how information is documented. Nurses and midwives represent the largest health workforce in Australia, with responsibility for collection, entry, and consumption of clinical information (Australian Digital Health Agency [ADHA], 2020), and therefore should have significant input in the design and implementation of electronic records. It is also important for nurses and midwives to understand the processes required for appropriate data and information quality, as set out in the National Nursing and Midwifery Digital Health Capability Framework (ADHA, 2020).
Medical records are designed to create efficiencies within the healthcare setting, by improving access to relevant and centralised information, quality of communication, understanding of instructions (as electronic documentation is easier to read), and improving patient safety using inbuilt algorithms for identifying potential errors or observational deviations (Jedwab et al., 2019). Secondary use of patient data has also been identified to indirectly impact patient outcomes and provide valuable amounts of data to non-direct care staff (Vuokko et al., 2017). To achieve the efficiencies desired, there are many factors that need consideration when implementing or enhancing an electronic medical record (EMR). While EMR processes and structures have improved on paper-based records, some clinicians can lack the knowledge and skill in its application (Akhu-Zaheya et.al., 2018). Due to the increased availability of data, nurses and midwives need to recognise the pivotal role they play in data management and lifecycle of patient data within EMRs.
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Google to delete user location history on US abortion clinic visits
Google has faced calls to limit smartphone data collection in the wake of anti-abortion laws passed in the United States
July 2, 2022 - 11:14AM AFP
Google announced Friday it would delete users' location history when they visit abortion clinics, domestic violence shelters and other places where privacy is sought.
"If our systems identify that someone has visited one of these places, we will delete these entries from Location History soon after they visit," Jen Fitzpatrick, a senior vice president at Google, wrote in a blog post. "This change will take effect in the coming weeks."
The announcement comes a week after the US Supreme Court made the tectonic decision to strip American women of constitutional rights to abortion, leading a dozen states to ban or severely restrict the procedure and prompting mass protests across the country.
Fitzpatrick also sought to reassure users that the company takes data privacy seriously.
"We take into account the privacy and security expectations of people using our products, and we notify people when we comply with government demands."
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Where does real interoperability start?
GS1 Australia
By Catherine Koetz, Industry Manager –
Healthcare, GS1 Australia
Friday, 01 July, 2022
Sponsored
Interoperability is about data and information having a consistent meaning enabling it to move and be used meaningfully between people, organisations and systems. Digitisation of healthcare that focuses on the patient and enables ready access to the relevant care information for those who have a legitimate need means that data and information must be interoperable — for the patient, this is a critical element.
How do data standards play a role in this vision of interoperability?
It is easy to focus on the infrastructure pieces, the large systems and solutions, or even the small edge technology that does amazing things or ‘goes ping’ because you can see and touch them. But underpinning their workings sits data. Whilst brilliant minds across technology have often developed data formats, schemas and proprietary solutions to problems and have implemented them within technology platforms. Whilst these home-grown solutions might work perfectly well in isolation, once data needs to be shared across technology platforms, between organisations, into centralised records or even across borders the necessity to be able to interpret it in a commonly defined way throughout the process means that these innovative ideas often fail to scale. Enter then data standards.
The data standards we need are already available
Not only are the data standards already available for many of the foundations, but in many cases, the implementations have already begun — at least elsewhere around the world. The issue is not whether the standards exist, it is ensuring that we are implementing them within Australian healthcare and the solutions we are deploying as we ‘digitalise’ our healthcare ecosystem. It is sometimes hard to understand why the progress has not been faster. To be fair it is not always the fault of the solutions, the issue is often that we are not clear on what standards should or in some cases must be implemented for the various areas within the health system, and with an absence of clarity we stick to the status quo and wait. While we wait, the digitising using non-scalable proprietary solutions continues, meaning that we will need to likely find funding across the various organisations to make changes to systems and processes — adding costs that Australian healthcare can ill afford and needing resources that are often in limited supply.
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Volt, HealthMatch: bad news keeps rolling in for start-ups
Karen Maley Columnist
Jun 29, 2022 – 4.14pm
Local start-upstart are feeling the pinch as increasingly anxious investors pull back from businesses which require large dollops of extra capital to achieve their growth ambitions.
Volt Bank on Wednesday announced plans to return more than $100 million in deposits to customers and to hand back its banking licence after its efforts to raise additional funding from large, global institutional investors, fell short.
“In this raise, we needed to bring in new, larger investors and for us, the timing just didn’t work”, Volt’s boss Steve Weston told The Australian Financial Review. “We just couldn’t raise the level of capital we needed to.”
HealthMatch is also feeling the funding squeeze. The health tech start-up, which has received backing from Malcolm and Lucy Turnbull, and the venture capital firm Square Peg, has been forced to lay off half of its staff, and explore other cost-cutting initiatives.
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Why this software founder wants to slow down growth and enjoy life
Yolanda Redrup Reporter
Jun 27, 2022 – 3.00pm
There’s a reason allied health software company Cliniko has had just two staff members leave in 11 years, says founder Joel Friedlaender: Cliniko puts people over profits, and that includes himself.
Spurning the fast-growth mentality that has come to characterise the start-up experience, Mr Friedlaender said he set out to do things differently from day one.
The bootstrapped company was founded when Mr Friedlaender quit his software development job at a large, “old-fashioned” company and used the $100,000 loan he had taken out with his wife to fund a renovation on their home to instead start his own business building operating software for allied health companies.
Offering unlimited annual leave, 30-hour weeks, and a fully remote workplace with free trips to visit the team in Australia, and no hierarchy, Mr Friedlaender says he knows how good he’s got it, and he doesn’t want that to change by the company getting too big.
“I am thinking about whether we want to grow less and if I want to cap the team sizes,” he told The Australian Financial Review from his home in the Victorian town of Healesville, about50 kilometres north-east of the Melbourne CBD.
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Turnbull-backed health tech start-up cuts 50pc of staff
Tess Bennett Technology reporter
Jun 29, 2022 – 11.14am
HealthMatch, a health tech start-up backed by Malcolm and Lucy Turnbull, has laid off half of its staff this week and is exploring options to further reduce its cost base to ride out the challenging fundraising environment that the sector is currently facing.
Founded in 2017 by then-final year University of Sydney medical student Manuri Gunawardena, the start-up built a digital platform to connect patients with upcoming clinical trials and raised $18 million in December 2020 led by venture capital fund Square Peg.
The 29 year-old founder said cutting 18 roles, the large majority of which were made redundant, was “an incredibly hard decision to make that we worked tirelessly to avoid”.
“There are several factors at play that have created downward pressure on tech stocks and the broader market that have had a very significant effect on capital raising, especially for growth stage companies,” Ms Gunawardena said.
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https://www.itnews.com.au/news/the-good-guys-pauses-facial-recognition-trial-581959
The Good Guys pauses facial recognition trial
By Byron Kaye on Jun 29, 2022 6:35AM
Over privacy complaint.
The Good Guys, Australia's second-biggest appliances chain, is pausing a trial of facial recognition technology in stores after a consumer group referred it to the privacy regulator for possible enforcement action.
Use of the technology by The Good Guys, owned by JB Hi-Fi, and two other retail chains was "unreasonably intrusive" and potentially in breach of privacy laws, the consumer group CHOICE told the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) in a complaint published on Monday.
The Good Guys said it would "pause the trial of the upgraded security system with the optional facial recognition technology being conducted in two of its Melbourne stores".
The company took confidentiality of personal information seriously and was confident it had complied with relevant laws, but decided "to pause the trial at this time pending any clarification from the OAIC regarding the use of this technology", it added.
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Even if they’re not actually intelligent, AIs may shift the nature of human expression itself
Impressive pattern-matching machines like DALL-E 2 and GPT-3 may not understand meaning, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t radically disruptive
Tue 28 Jun 2022 03.30 AESTLast modified on Tue 28 Jun 2022 07.08 AEST
Did you hear that Donald Trump recently attacked the popular Netflix show Stranger Things at a rally? “Have you seen that garbage on Netflix?” Trump asked the crowd in Pennsylvania. “It’s a disgrace. I mean, really, really bad. It’s a complete and total ripoff of my life story. I was the one who first discovered the power of the Upside Down. But instead of using it to do evil, I used it to make America great again.”
OK, full disclosure: that did not happen. The quote was generated by GPT-3, an autoregressive language model developed by San Francisco artificial intelligence outfit OpenAI which can produce convincing, humanlike text in response to prompts.
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https://wildhealth.net.au/interoperability-or-integration-that-is-the-question/
28 June 2022
Interoperability or integration – that is the question
Health was in the hot seat at the first National Cabinet meeting to be chaired by new prime minister Anthony Albanese this month.
The big headline from the meeting of the cabinet – made up of the prime minister and state and territory premiers and chief ministers – was the federal government’s decision to extend extra health funding to hospitals until 30 December.
The Commonwealth introduced the emergency funding, which is a 50/50 split between the states and territories and the government, in response to the covid pandemic.
The program was due to finish in September and the three-month extension will cost the federal government an additional $760 million.
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https://wildhealth.net.au/interoperability-in-practice-in-the-us-qa-with-paul-wilder/
28 June 2022
Interoperability in practice in the US: Q&A with Paul Wilder
In this Q&A session at the at Inaugural Australasian CXO Cloud Healthcare Summit, Jeremy Knibbs sat down with Paul Wilder to discuss how interoperability currently operates in the American healthcare system.
Paul spent ten years as Chief Information Officer to one of the largest health information exchange networks, the New York ehealth collaborative. He is currently executive director of CommonWell Health Alliance.
The two discuss how hospitals in the United States have taken up interoperability, and how CommonWell is reinventing the transfer of patient data and primary care by enabling a patient’s medical history to travel with them across the country.
Below is a snapshot of the interview and audience questions. Watch the full recording:
Jeremy: For context, can you give us a quick history lesson in interoperability in the United States over the last 20 years, including the 21st century cures act which now mandates standards for providers and vendors?
Paul: When CommonWell started in 2013, it was during a phase in the United States called meaningful use, where the government was funding the conversion from analogue to digital records by paying providers and hospitals to prove they’re meaningfully using something digital.
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https://www.ausdoc.com.au/opinion/mindfulness-effective-treating-mental-illness-and-what-about-apps
Is mindfulness effective for treating mental illness? And what about the apps?
Associate Professor Nicholas Van Dam
Dr Van Dam is associate professor in the Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, University of Melbourne
27th June 2022
Mindfulness forms part of the trillion-dollar wellness industry, representing 1.5–6% of yearly spending around the world (estimated to be more than US$200 million) on wellness products and services.
Smartphone apps, in particular, have skyrocketed in popularity offering incredible promise for mental health with wide reach, and scalability at low cost. Mental ill-health was on the rise before the pandemic but reached new heights during it. Correspondingly, COVID created previously unseen demand for mindfulness apps and online courses.
It’s no surprise people have turned to mindfulness in the wake of the past few stressful years, and their considerable promotion. And while there may be some benefit, it cannot treat mental ill-health on its own, and should not be relied upon to do so.
What does research say about mindfulness for treating mental health?
In-person mindfulness-based programs such as those for stress reduction, which often include health information and guided meditation practice, show moderate benefits among healthy individuals and those with mental ill-health.
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Australia urgently needs wise cryptocurrency regulation despite bitcoin’s fall
5:08PM June 26, 2022
It would be a severe misreading of current events to put crypto regulation on the back burner because of the collapse of certain virtual assets or because the price of bitcoin has fallen. The fundamental strength and disruptive capacity of the technology remains sound, the utility remains and therefore popularity will be maintained.
In Australia, 25 per cent of the population has accessed digital assets. The need to regulate these issues should remain a high priority for governments. We must set governance standards to protect consumers and prevent damage, as seen in recent times with the collapse of stablecoins.
The result will be that markets and custody systems will be licensed like traditional financial services. This is highly desirable. This is a real opportunity for Australia to make a historical departure from having peculiar and parochial financial regulation which has damaged our export prospects for generations.
As the World Economic Forum meeting in San Francisco debates cryptocurrency and the policy and regulation required to protect consumers and promote investment, I offer two thoughts.
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https://insightplus.mja.com.au/2022/24/smishing-cyber-scams-reach-a-whole-new-level/
Smishing: cyber scams reach a whole new level
Authored by Jane McCredie
Medicare: You have been in close contact with someone who has Omicron. Please follow the link below to order your PCR kit…
WHEN I received this text last week, there was a microsecond of anxiety.
“Oh no, here we go again” was my first thought, swiftly followed by the realisation that Medicare could not possibly know who I’d been in contact with and wouldn’t be sending me a link to order a PCR kit even if they did.
With around a million new cases of COVID-19 a month across Australia, contact tracing in the general community is no longer even a possibility. It just isn’t happening anymore.
I pasted the text into a search engine and, sure enough, it was the latest in a long line of scams inspired by the COVID-19 pandemic.
As this government site explains, the recent spate of messages are impersonating government agencies to steal personal and banking details and, ultimately, money.
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Privacy experts recommend deleting period tracking apps as Roe v Wade abortion decision overturned
A chilling warning has gone out across the United States about exactly what authorities could do with personal data stored on womens’ phones.
June 26, 2022 - 2:35PM
Women in the US are concerned about how far authorities will go to stop abortions after a historic decision ended their legal right to terminate a pregnancy in their first two trimesters.
Advocates are concerned that a woman’s search history, location data and period tracking apps could be used by authorities to find out if she is pregnant, if she is considering abortion and if she goes through with the abortion.
On Saturday morning AEST, millions of American women lost the legal right to have an abortion after the US Supreme Court overturned a landmark ruling which for nearly half a century had protected women.
Roe v Wade, which in 1973 provided the constitutional right to abortions up until foetal viability, was overturned on Friday local time.
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David.
