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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 any 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, and found interesting.
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https://www.innovationaus.com/serious-issues-with-police-access-to-telco-data-rise/
‘Serious’ issues with police access to telco data on the rise
Justin
Hendry
Editor
8 September 2022
“Serious compliance issues” with law enforcement access to metadata and content under Australia’s telecommunications interception laws have climbed for the third straight year, the Commonwealth Ombudsman has found.
The 2020-21 report, covering use of the powers between July 2019 to June 2020, made 29 recommendations across six agencies, up from 21 recommendations in 2018-19, 13 recommendations in 2017-18 and one recommendation in 2016-17.
Recommendations, unlike suggestions or “better practices suggestions”, are deemed a “serious compliance issue or an issue on which an agency has not made sufficient progress in implementation”.
“Generally, we saw an increase in the number of compliance-related findings compared to previous inspections,” the Ombudsman said, adding that this was partly down to its “increased emphasis on inspecting agencies’ policies, procedures, and controls”
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National clinical and consumer health design council for data and digital
Tuesday, 6 September 2022
NEWS - eHealthNews.nz editor Rebecca McBeth
Te Whatu Ora is forming a national clinical and consumer
health design council for data and digital.
Stuart Bloomfield, interim chief data and digital, Te Whatu Ora, made the
announcement in his keynote address to the HiNZ Digital Health Leadership
Summit in Wellington on September 5.
He said the new group will advise on and prioritise the many clinical data and
digital projects being worked on nationwide, ensuring they “fit into an
overall, cohesive and smarter system”.
“There are 470 clinician system related projects currently in the pipeline, so
they won’t be short of work,” he told the 200-strong audience.
There are also more than 95 planned data and analytical projects across the
country and the new structure of the health system provides the opportunity to
look at these through a regional and national lens.
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Connecting Australian health care
By Dr Holger Kaufmann* ADHA
Friday, 09 September, 2022
In a healthcare system that values cutting-edge technology to diagnose, treat and manage conditions, consistent sharing of consumer health information remains an elusive target. Australia has key systems in place to enable and support standardisation and connected health systems, such as national healthcare identifiers, and continues to make progress as shown by the rapid national uptake of electronic prescribing which was accelerated by the challenging COVID environment.
Consumers want a connected healthcare system
Despite this, there is growing impatience among consumers and healthcare providers for a more connected healthcare system as the healthcare sector lags behind other industries in adopting digital technologies and standards that deliver seamless connectivity. In 2022, cancers can be treated with sophisticated biological medicines tailored to the genotype of the cancer in question and advanced surgical techniques have revolutionised how once major surgeries are carried out as minimally invasive interventions.
What hasn’t changed is the way consumer health information is shared through the health system — still to a large extent by paper, with inadequate and inconsistent presentation of the information required to safely manage consumer’s information.
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Telehealth diagnoses match those of face-to-face doctor visits most of the time, study suggests
However, the accuracy varies somewhat according to the type of medical condition
8 September 2022
With the increase in the use of telehealth, a new study offers some reassurance: Diagnoses made via video are usually on the money.
Mayo Clinic researchers in the US found that of preliminary diagnoses made during video appointments at their centres, 87% were later confirmed during in-person visits.
Accuracy varied somewhat according to the type of medical condition, with the researchers stressing some conditions were tough to pinpoint without a physical exam, a test or imaging.
On the other hand, video visits worked very well for mental health diagnoses which were confirmed 96% of the time at follow-up in-person visits. They also worked well in specialties like allergy and immunology, orthopaedics and urology.
“I think, first and foremost, these findings should be reassuring to patients and [providers],” said lead researcher Dr Bart Demaerschalk, of Mayo’s Center for Digital Health in Phoenix, Arizona.
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https://www.innovationaus.com/tech-giants-rally-against-data-localisation-in-australia/
Tech giants rally against data localisation in Australia
Justin
Hendry
Editor
7 September 2022
Global tech giants and their industry associations have rallied against the federal government introducing localisation requirements for data storage, arguing it brings no inherent benefit to cybersecurity and that such a regime could impede the economy.
But several others have called for the government to adopt a more nuanced position that takes data sensitivity into account, with one Australian cloud provider suggesting “full data sovereignty” is needed in some instances.
The Department of Home Affairs called for views on the possible introduction of an explicit approach to data localisation in a discussion paper exploring a future National Data Security Action Plan earlier this year.
The paper said that with many countries already having adopted data localisation laws and others moving to do so, it was timely to consider such a requirement to protect sensitive information, noting that it offers no “security guarantee” and could restrict trade.
In Australia, Commonwealth laws already prevent the government from storing personal and sensitive data overseas in some instances such as the information held in the My Health Record system.
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https://wildhealth.net.au/using-practice-data-to-improve-patient-experiences/
31 August 2022
Using practice data to improve patient experiences
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Running a healthcare practice is a continual quality improvement journey. Your practice’s data can streamline this process, giving you insights to help you measure and enhance business performance, your daily running processes and ultimately, your patients’ satisfaction and outcomes.
Staying across your practice data helps you keep doing what works and change what doesn’t.
If your practice still uses spreadsheets, and shares files via email or folders on hard drives, then tracking, measuring and implementing insights from your practice data could be time consuming and potentially error-prone. Digital technology makes this process quicker and simpler. A practice management platform such as PracticeHub lets you easily create, store and update your policies and procedures, manage daily tasks and equipment maintenance, and train your staff. Coupled with a data analytics platform like Cubiko, your practice’s data becomes a meaningful guide for your quality improvement strategy.
Let’s look at some strategies for using your practice data to achieve excellence in your services and processes.
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https://wildhealth.net.au/webinar-reaching-out-and-reaching-in-to-connect-our-health-system/
8 September 2022
Webinar: reaching out and reaching in to connect our health system
In the first National Cabinet of our new government on June 17th, there was a strong commitment between the states, territories and the Commonwealth to work together to identify practical improvements to the health system.
There was a particular focus on the connections between GPs and hospitals, and practical ways to get aged care residents and NDIS participants out of hospital and into a more appropriate setting. But how will this work in reality?
The Australian Hospital and Healthcare Association and Wild Health invite you to join us for a free-to-attend webinar tackling this question. The discussion will focus on what is needed to digitally connect our fragmented health system and enable outcomes-focused, value-based health care. We have brought together some of Australia’s leading industry figures who bring their expert perspectives to the discussion.
Date: 21 September
Time: 12:30pm AEDT
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DoorDash enables home delivery of pharmacy drugs
4:06PM September 7, 2022
Global delivery provider DoorDash has teamed with three local online pharmacy marketplaces to enable over-the-counter and prescription medicines to be delivered in Australia, after the pandemic led to a sustained spike in demand for both on-demand deliveries and remote GP consults.
Launched this week, the medicine delivery service is available through DoorDash’s white-label delivery service DoorDash Drive. It allows pharmacies to fulfil orders from their own e-commerce platform, with the deliveries then made by DoorDash drivers.
DoorDash has partnered with online pharmacy marketplaces Chemist2U, Packapill and Melbourne start-up Medmate for the offering, which is available nationally. To access pharmacy delivery, customers place an order via the merchants’ website, select the “Fast” delivery option, and the delivery is then facilitated via DoorDash.
“We’re thrilled to offer access to certain over-the-counter and prescription medication, providing convenience to Australians, particularly those who are unwell or can’t get to a pharmacy,” DoorDash Australia and New Zealand general manager Rebecca Burrows told The Australian.
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Innovation, digitalisation and analytics in healthcare
Nuance
Communications
Wednesday, 07 September,
2022
Healthcare systems and professionals have traditionally been slow to adopt new digital technologies and innovations. All that changed with the global COVID-19 outbreak — defiance to online healthcare decreased, attitudes changed, regulations were temporarily relaxed and the result was years of digital transformation happened in a few weeks.
Like many industries in many countries, the implementation of healthcare cloud solutions is increasing in Australia. The pros of implementing cloud solutions for healthcare organisations are tremendous: real-time access to data, reliability, high security standards and cost savings with the Software as a Service (SaaS) model. Data backup, remote access to My Health Record, healthcare applications, patient portals, electronic medical records and telehealth are the goals.
For clinicians and healthcare organisations, this leads to greater efficiency, a higher quality of daily work, a better quality of care and controlled budgets. Moreover, organisations can access greater insights into workflow processing, help boost productivity, develop improvement plans and will be able to produce scalable results based on an analytical approach.
‘New normal’ ways of working
The primary disruptor in 2020 was the COVID-19 pandemic crisis, affecting healthcare systems and forcing hospitals leaders to accelerate their journey to the cloud, to digitise quickly and effectively, providing accessible solutions anytime-anywhere. The Software as a Service model (SaaS) contributes to the adaptation of health information systems to these changes. The pandemic accelerated the adoption of new trends in the healthcare world such as telehealth — and in ways that nobody could have imagined: the key question, as for countries around the world, is how to maintain the momentum, build future resilience and drive the opportunity for innovation in new digitally-enabled models of care.
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Wednesday, 07 September 2022 10:10
ACS welcomes government review into IT programs
ACS, the professional association for Australia’s technology sector, has given a tick of approval to the Federal Government’s commitment to widen the pipeline of talent available to the science and technology sectors.
Welcoming the Minister for Industry and Science Ed Husic’s announcement of the Government’s commitment, ACS CEO Chris Vein said the Albanese Government request that the Department of Industry, Science and Resources examine how existing Government programs can be reformed to support greater diversity in Australia’s science and technology sectors “is an important and necessary step for the industry”’.
“ACS has long advocated for measures to address the industry’s imbalances in areas such as gender, age, race, neurodiversity and sexual orientation. Including more Australians in the industry needs to be a priority.
“Our annual Digital Pulse report has long highlighted these issues and the 2021 survey found achieving gender parity in the Australian tech sector over twenty years would see 5,000 extra workers entering the industry each year and deliver an $11bn boost to the economy over the two decades.
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https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=713c8a21-e9dd-45f6-9f4b-ec36dc83d295
The Productivity Commission’s digital transformation report: unravelling the puzzle of why Australia should be doing better
Gilbert + Tobin - Andrew Low, Peter Waters and James Johnson
Australia September 5 2022
The Productivity Commission (PC) is half-way through its second five‑yearly review of Australia’s productivity performance. The first five-yearly review, “Shifting The Dial”, made recommendations to focused on non-traded markets such as health, education and town planning, but as yet there has been no substantive response from the Commonwealth Government.
In the period since, Australia’s productivity has continued to slow. The Grattan Institute’s research presented at the Jobs and Skills Summit leads to the sharp assessment that Australia is “older, fatter and slower”. The Institute identified as one of the reasons “a declining contribution from technological advancements”, which is striking when you think about the accelerating pace of technological change.
In the lead-up to the summit, the PC released two Interim Reports, Interim Report 1: Key to Prosperity and Interim Report 2: Australia’s data and digital dividend. We focus on the digital dividend report.
Australia’s digital puzzle
At the heart of the PC interim report is the following observation:
“While we do well compared to other developed economies on foundational aspects of technology and data use (such as internet connections and data volumes), we are falling behind on some more advanced indicators. Australia’s internet speeds are relatively low and business use of data-driven technologies, such as AI and analytics, trails uptake in other countries”.
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The CEO who might have too much power over the internet
Mark Di Stefano Reporter
Sep 6, 2022 – 1.08pm
The American chief executive of Cloudflare thinks he has too much personal power over what appears on the internet as the top cybersecurity firm grapples with the fallout from a unilateral decision to pull the plug on an extremist website.
Matthew Prince made the frank admission after making global headlines last weekend for removing Cloudflare’s services from Kiwi Farms, a website where online extremists gathered to organise trolling campaigns that mostly targeted minorities.
The decision to withdraw its cybersecurity services effectively knocked the website offline after Cloudflare had detected threats the CEO said were as alarming as those that appeared online before the Christchurch mosque massacre.
In an exclusive interview with The Australian Financial Review in Sydney, Mr Prince said the decision was an emergency and made without the direction of authorities.
Asked whether the episode showed that he personally had too much responsibility over what appears on the internet, Mr Prince replied: “Absolutely.
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Pension funds join race for Crescent Capital’s PRP Diagnostic
Bridget Carter
7:00PM September 5, 2022
It turns out that not just Morrison & Co and private equity firm EQT are interested in buying Crescent Capital’s PRP Diagnostic Imaging business.
Pension funds are interested as well.
DataRoom understands that a Canadian pension fund is keen to buy the business, and judging from recent experience, one would assume that it could be OMERS or the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, while Canada Pension Plan Investment Board can’t be ruled out.
Crescent Capital has hired Morgan Stanley for a sale of PRP, and the understanding is that a possible deal has been triggered by approaches from EQT and Morrison & Co.
EQT previously owned Australia’s largest private diagnostic imaging owner, I-Med, which it sold to Permira, while Morrison & Co purchased Qscan Radiology Clinics from Quadrant in 2020 for $735m.
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https://www.innovationaus.com/oaic-resourcing-inadequate-as-foi-burden-grows-report/
OAIC resourcing inadequate as FOI burden grows: report
Justin
Hendry
Editor
5 September 2022
The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) is “increasingly burdened” by the weight of its freedom of information work and requires additional resourcing to fulfil its roles, according to a new report.
The report from independent think tank, the Centre for Public Integrity, comes as the Australian Information Commissioner and Privacy Commissioner Angelene Falk pleads with the new government for more funding to keep up with an increase workload.
Titled ‘Delay and Decay: Australia’s Freedom of Information Crisis’, the report, released on Monday, reveals “inordinate delay, under resourcing and the abuse of statutory exceptions” have together “undermined” the FOI scheme.
It said a growing “culture of secrecy” was at least partially responsible, with the proportion of FOI requests granted in full at first instance “falling by over 30 per cent” since 2011-12. In the same timeframe, there has been a 50 per cent increase in claims refused in full.
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No signal, no problem: Apple trying to conquer one of smartphone’s final frontiers
By Matthew Field
September 6, 2022 — 7.04am
Deep in the wilderness, disaster strikes. You fall suddenly, feeling a sharp pain stabbing through your leg, and find you cannot stand up. Pulling out your mobile phone in the hope of calling for help, colour drains from your face as you look at the screen – zero bars of signal.
If you are lucky, weighing down your backpack is a back-up satellite phone to call for help. These hefty devices, reminiscent of the first mobiles sold in the 1980s, connect to orbiting satellites and are used by extreme adventurers, on ships, or in war zones and disaster areas devoid of mobile communications.
These expensive and unwieldy devices use powerful technology to connect to satellites hurtling around the earth at hundreds of kilometres an hour. It is a difficult trick to pull off.
Smartphone manufacturers have traditionally avoided this technology. That could be about the change. Soon, you could be catching up on your WhatsApps via satellite from the iPhone in your pocket.
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Monday, 05 September 2022 15:19
Clinical trial tech company Evrima secures $3 million raise
Australian clinical trials company Evrima has raised $3 million to boost its aim to double headcount and grow the capabilities of its tech platform.
In closing the round, Evrima - a startup pioneering an end-to-end solution for clinical trials - has become the first recipient of Artesian’s new Female Leaders Fund and also had participation by BridgeLane Capital and Wavemaker Partners.
Founded in 2019 by Charlotte Bradshaw, who built her career around clinical research recruitment and marketing, Evrima says its platform aims to ease the various pain points faced by researchers in establishing and operating a clinical trial.
“This primarily lies in recruitment, where over 80 percent of studies are delayed due to the time it takes to find and qualify enough relevant patients for a trial. This problem is compounded by a lack of easily accessible information for General Physicians on local clinical trials,” notes Evrima.
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https://www.afr.com/technology/sydney-start-up-cashes-in-clinical-trial-boom-20220901-p5bemy
Sydney start-up cashes in clinical trial boom
Tess Bennett Work, careers and technology reporter
Sep 5, 2022 – 2.00pm
Early-stage investor Artesian has made the first investment from its new female-led investment fund, deploying $3 million into a clinical trials software company called Evrima.
Artesian’s $100 million Female Leaders Fund is earmarked for Series A and B investments in high-growth female-led companies in Australia, New Zealand, South-East Asia and China.
Charlotte Bradshaw founded Evrima in 2019 after throwing in her job as a project manager at Clayton Utz to solve a frustration she first experienced a decade ago when working to recruit candidates for clinical trials.
“Being able to find patients, give them a good patient experience, and to meet clinical trial milestones on time and on budget was all a very cumbersome and manual process,” Ms Bradshaw told The Australian Financial Review.
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Funding to trial integrated care model in WA
Monday, 05 September, 2022
Non-profit organisation GP Down South Limited will receive $1.8 million funding from the federal government to develop and trial a model of integrated care that is patient-centred and improves access for rural Australians, especially for people living with chronic conditions.
The trial in the Warren-Blackwood region of Western Australia (WA) has received funding under the Innovative Models of Care (IMOC) grants program.
As part of this trial, a clinical care team will set up a walk-in centre to assess patients, develop treatment plans that best suit their needs, and connect them with local GPs and other support services.
The walk-in centre is expected to help take the pressure off hospital emergency departments by giving locals another option to receive care.
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Driving digital transformation for healthcare through data capture
GS1 Australia
Thursday, 01 September, 2022
2D or not 2D is no longer the question!
After the past several years, as consumers we are all too familiar with the 2-Dimensional barcodes as we have been actively scanning PDF417 barcodes on printed airline boarding passes, Aztec codes for digital airline barcodes and QR Code barcodes for check-ins or competitions. In product traceability and supply chain applications, ‘2D’ barcodes have also become more prevalent around the world in healthcare and increasingly too on other products.
Evolution not Revolution
The movement to ‘2D’ barcodes in healthcare has been a slow one, at least in Australia. However, with regulations such as Therapeutic Goods Order 106 (TGO106) outlining a new standard for serialisation and data matrix codes on medicines and the Unique Device Identification (UDI) system for medical devices under development for Australia, we are already seeing a gradual increase on regulated healthcare items. The increased implementation of Electronic Medical Records (EMR) and Electronic Medication Management (EMM) is also driving further adoption.
They are all QR Codes, aren’t they?
In short, the answer is no. QR codes are just one of the types of 2D barcodes. Though knowing what type of barcode is being implemented probably seems insignificant, with the sector becoming more digital and the complex systems needing to be structured, interoperable, and standardised data, having barcodes with clearly defined and interpreted content is quite important. The trend is therefore away from the use of internally defined or proprietary coding and internal identification to those based on global data standards.
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Primary school children filming and uploading sexualised content in worrying new trend
By Erin Pearson
September 4, 2022 — 4.30pm
An increasing number of primary school-aged children are creating and uploading their own sexually explicit material to the internet, prompting fears from child abuse investigators that they are putting themselves at risk of serious harm.
Investigators say they have discovered Australian children as young as 6 making their own content, with growing concerns that popular influencer-promoted websites such as OnlyFans are normalising making pornography for cash.
Detective Acting Inspector Carla McIntyre, the officer in charge of the Joint Anti-Child Exploitation Team, said police were now having tough conversations with parents after knocking on doors thinking they’re preventing children from harm, only to find the child was authoring their own exploitation material.
“We’ve gone through the door with a search warrant and then identified actually there is no adult involved in this, it’s actually just the child,” McIntyre said.
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David.
