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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 are still dated 6 December, 2018! How pathetic is that for transparency? Secrecy unconstrained!
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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Legislation will be key to convincing Australians to install a contact tracing app on their phones.
April 25, 2020
Legislation rather then a reliance on trust will be key to convincing Australians to install a contact tracing app on their phones.
The app retains 21 days worth of encrypted IDs of phones you’ve been in contact with.
It’s not just an Australian idea. Macquarie University Professor of Computing Dali Kaafar said around 50 different coronavirus apps were being developed globally. And it’s not just phones – smart wristbands and bracelets are being devised in some countries with a poorer phone take-up.
Australia is basing its contact tracing app on the TraceTogether smartphone app used in Singapore.
In the Australian version, phones use Bluetooth to exchange their encrypted IDs when they are 1.5 metres or less away for 15 minutes. That’s provided both phones have the app running.
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Bridging the digital divide
Monday, 13 April 2020
eHealthNews.nz editor Rebecca McBeth
The New Zealand health sector’s rapid adoption of virtual care in response to the Covid-19 pandemic risks exacerbating inequalities in the health system. Ensuring the vulnerable are not left behind has been identified as a key piece of work moving forward.
The arrival of Covid-19 on New Zealand’s shores has seen an unprecedented shift in how healthcare is delivered.
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Friday, 24 April 2020 10:05
Information Commissioner gets go-ahead to sue Facebook US and Ireland
The Australian Information Commissioner has been given the green light by the Federal Court to sue Facebook Inc (the US company) and Facebook Ireland for allegedly violating the privacy of Australians in the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
The Federal Court granted leave for this move on Wednesday,
saying, "the material demonstrates a genuine argument about contravention, sufficient to justify causing the respondents to be subject to the litigation in Australia where the merit of that argument can be judicially determined".
Proceedings were
initiated against the two Facebook entities in March, with the allegation that serious and/or repeated interferences had been committed with privacy in contravention of Australian privacy law.
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Virus has transformed society: NBN Co boss
· 1:00AM April 24, 2020
NBN Co chief executive Stephen Rue believes the coronavirus pandemic will prove to be revolutionary for the Australian economy by transforming the way people work, learn, shop and seek medical advice, but has warned of the dire consequences of believing the nation is out of the crisis.
In a wide-ranging briefing with the Trans-Tasman Business Circle on Thursday, Mr Rue said the experience of countries overseas showed that if “we are not careful as a nation in the month ahead, things could get worse again very quickly”.
“We have to be very careful to say we are out of this crisis and on the downside,’’ he said after detailing the extensive work NBN Co rapidly undertook in late March to gear up to provide extra network capacity and services for essential services, corporations and Australians working from home.
“The month ahead is about further vigilance. We still have daily crisis management meetings (at NBN Co) for a reason.”
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Covid-19 tracing app plagued by privacy, efficacy concerns
Cybersecurity and privacy experts have lined up to voice concerns about the federal government’s proposed coronavirus tracing app.
Slated to be released in a few weeks, an Australian contact-tracing smartphone app based on Singapore’s
TraceTogether app has been the subject of heated debate over its mode of operations and conditions surrounding its launch.
On Monday, the government confirmed that using the app would not be mandatory, and that the app
would not track people’s locations, nor would the data be made available to law enforcement.
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How a Canberra researcher cracked the WHO in hours
Apr 23, 2020 – 10.51am
Robert Potter spent a few hours early Wednesday morning trying to access the World Health Organisation's business systems from his home in Canberra.
An ex-Australian government defensive cyber specialist, Mr Potter used leaked emails and passwords dumped online by unknown activists to penetrate the WHO and the
Wuhan Institute of Virology. It wasn't difficult.
"I was able to get easy access to the WHO systems," Mr Potter said in an interview. "They did not have two-factor authentication."
At that point, Mr Potter contacted Maria Milosavljevic, the chief data officer at Services Australia, who he had worked with when it was the Department of Human Services.
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Thursday, 23 April 2020 12:11
Cryptographer suggests Australia adopt decentralised model for COVID-19 app
Australia should not follow Singapore and adopt a centralised model for its coronavirus contact-tracing app, cryptographer Vanessa Teague says, pointing out that with this model if someone tests positive, their list of contacts is given to the authorities.
Outlining the way
Singapore's TraceTogether app works, Teague, who is the chief executive of Thinking Cybersecurity, said in
a post on GitHub that when one phone was near another, the app sent random-looking beacons over Bluetooth. These TempIDs were encrypted and generated by the central server and there were several problems with this model.
For one, Teague said, a user would be unable tell whether accurate IDs were being sent to one's contacts.
"When you download your encrypted IDs, you are relying on them to be a truthful reflection of your ID. If a software bug, security problem, or network attack gives you someone else's encrypted IDs instead, you have no way to notice," she said. "If you send IDs that are not yours, then when someone near you tests positive, you will not be notified."
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iOS a ‘major hurdle’ to contact tracing app
22 April 2020
The need for iOS devices to be unlocked and running the contact tracing app in the foreground poses a “major hurdle” to widespread adoption, unless the Australian government chooses to adopt Apple’s privacy-protecting model or reaches a separate deal with the tech giant.
It comes as the lead developer of the Singapore government’s
TraceTogether app, on which Australia’s version is heavily based, said it is unclear whether the initiative has been successful, and that regardless it should not be seen as a replacement for manual contact tracing.
Singapore’s TraceTogether app, launched last month, uses Bluetooth technology to record contact between users. If a user is later diagnosed with COVID-19, the list of other users they have been in contact with is then sent to government health authorities, who then notify these people through the phone numbers they have provided the app.
The Australian government is using source code from this app to develop its own contact tracing app, which is set to be launched within weeks.
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How will the coronavirus app work?
The federal government wants you to download an app. Critics say it's a surefire way to get our personal data stolen. Proponents say it will save lives. Here's the detail.
April 22, 2020
The federal government wants you to download an app. The app – a tool you will be able to download to your smartphone soon – would speed up contact tracing for new coronavirus cases.
Contact tracing is one of the ways some governments, including ours, are suppressing the spread of this virus. When someone falls ill, a special team quickly gathers as much information as they can from the patient, then calls up anyone who's had close contact with them while they were infectious and tells those people to isolate themselves. The government says contact tracing is a must-have in order for them to even consider relaxing lockdown laws.
Hundreds of contact tracers are working in teams across Australia already. The app, says the government, will offer an additional automated version of this process. By enabling your phone to identify who's near you and preparing a record of who you've been near that's ready to go in case you ever contract COVID-19. It would save time. It might even save lives.
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Upcoming Webinars - Australian Digital Health Agency
Dear ASCIA members, ADHA Propaganda
As you are aware, Telehealth services in Australia have been expanded to help protect people most at-risk in our community from exposure to COVID-19. To support Telehealth service provision, the Australian Digital Health Agency is fast tracking Electronic Prescribing. Electronic Prescribing provides an option for prescribers and their patients to have an electronic prescription as an alternative to a paper prescription.
The National Allergy Strategy My Health Record project is currently developing an Electronic Prescribing fact sheet for ASCIA members to provide step by step guidance.
In the meantime, however, you may be interested in participating in the following webinars being held by the Australian Digital Health Agency in April 2020.
Digital health tools for COVID 19 and beyond – improving care coordination
21 April 2020, 6:30pm – 8:00pm AEST: This webinar will examine ways in which new and existing digital health technologies can be utilised to improve continuity of care for your patients during times of social distancing and remote consultations. There will be a focus on Electronic Prescribing and the ways in which My Health Record can help support telehealth consults and remote dispensing. It will also include some of the simple things you can do to protect your business from cyber risks which new telehealth platforms might pose.
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The reason Zoom calls drain your energy
By Manyu Jiang 23rd April 2020
Video chat is helping us stay employed and connected. But what makes it so tiring - and how can we reduce ‘Zoom fatigue’? Y
Your screen freezes. There’s a weird echo. A dozen heads stare at you. There are the work huddles, the one-on-one meetings and then, once you’re done for the day, the hangouts with friends and family.
Since the Covid-19 pandemic hit, we’re on video calls more than ever before – and many are finding it exhausting.
But what, exactly, is tiring us out? BBC Worklife spoke to Gianpiero Petriglieri, an associate professor at Insead, who explores sustainable learning and development in the workplace, and Marissa Shuffler, an associate professor at Clemson University, who studies workplace wellbeing and teamwork effectiveness, to hear their views.
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The use of technology in health care is now more important than ever
By Jane Allman
Tuesday, 21 April, 2020 ADHA Propaganda
Australia needs a well-designed digital health system in order to transform health care. Benefits should include better patient experience, quality care and improved health outcomes. The rollout of
National Digital Health Strategy initiatives — with the
Australian Digital Health Agency at the helm — is realising Australia’s digital health future and COVID-19 is ensuring that it is fast-tracked.
The Australian Digital Health Agency (the Agency) — established in 2016 to lead the development of the strategy and its implementation — has been tasked with evolving digital health to meet the needs of modern Australia and it is now critical to ensure this happens quickly. The Agency is working with healthcare providers, industry peak bodies, government departments and vendors to facilitate digital health integration in the health system and deliver the key initiatives.
The Australian Government’s National Digital Health Strategy was devised to digitise the Australian health system, making it safe, seamless and secure.
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Contact tracing app is not Big Brother
Blare Sutton
· 8:00AM April 22, 2020
The Federal government’s plans to introduce an app based on the Singapore government-developed app TraceTogether to help prevent the spread of COVID-19 has stirred controversy, pitting public health practitioners on one side and privacy advocates, security specialists and conspiracy theorists on the other.
It is important to examine closely the risks of an app like TraceTogether but first we need to understand how it works in Singapore.
Once installed from the Google or Apple App Store, TraceTogether generates and stores a unique User ID on the user’s phone. This ID and the mobile phone number are uploaded to the Ministry of Health in Singapore. The app runs in the background, using the phone’s Bluetooth connection to “listen” out for other devices within Bluetooth range that also have TraceTogether installed and running.
If two devices stay close enough for long enough – around 15 minutes – the apps will connect over Bluetooth and exchange User IDs. TraceTogether saves this User ID, along with the time and duration that it was within Bluetooth range, in an encrypted form on the phone.
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Privacy boffins call for legislated protections from coronavirus tracker app
Cautions against scope creep.
Australians should have a legislated right to be forgotten similar to EU citizens according to a location privacy expert concerned about the introduction of a contact tracing app designed to help contain the coronavirus outbreak.
Dr Mahmoud Elkhodr from Central Queensland University a series of safeguards will be needed to address privacy concerns while enabling healthcare authorities to effectively track the spread of the disease.
While the government has said it plans to release the source code of the app, Elkhodr says legislating citizens’ right to have their data erased should be at the top of the agenda.
“Perhaps the first measure the government should take to preserve the privacy of Australians is to draft legislation and implement features that allow them to simply delete their personal information.” he said in a statement.
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21 April 2020
How these agencies are breaching patient privacy
Privacy experts have criticised Services Australia and AHPRA for sharing thousands of private health records every year without informing patients, a practice that appears to contradict the government’s own guidelines.
Large volumes of Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) and Medicare Benefits Schedule (MBS) data are routinely shared between the two agencies to aid AHPRA’s investigations into alleged doctor misconduct.
While doctors are informed when their own private health data, or their practice data, is transferred to AHPRA during an investigation, patients are not routinely alerted by either agency that their privacy has been breached.
In 2019, Services Australia released 2,625 private health records to AHPRA, which represented an increase in disclosures since 2017.
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Tuesday, 21 April 2020 10:54
Launtel chief suggests steps to improve trust in COVID-19 app
The head of Internet service provider Launtel says the planned contact-tracing app for COVID-19 will be a failure unless the government takes additional steps to ensure that Australians have faith it will not violate their privacy.
Damian Ivereigh suggested that the government could avoid using code from the Singapore government to build a contact-tracing app for COVID-19 as one step to make it easier to convince Australians of the integrity of the app.
In a blog post, he said that while open-sourcing the code no matter its origins was a must, the government could go one step further and make it a home-grown open-source app.
The government has said it needs at least 40% take-up for the data that is provided by the app to make a difference.
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Author's Opinion
The views in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of iTWire.
Have your say and comment below.
Tuesday, 21 April 2020 11:31
Apple-Google COVID-19 contact-tracing efforts should alarm us all
A measure of how much the coronavirus pandemic has spooked people can be gauged from the lack of any outcry over the plans announced by Google and Apple for developing technology that can be used for contact-tracing.
Even when the two companies, both notorious violators of user privacy, said the technology would become a part of their own mobile operating systems, there has been little or no comment on how dangerous this could be to users worldwide.
Embedding this technology within iOS and Android means that it is unlikely to be ever removed; had it been a separate app that was being crafted, there would have been some reason not to get unduly alarmed.
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Coronavirus: There’s nothing to fear from contact-tracing app
MATT COMYN
· 12:00AM April 20, 2020
In the midst of a major pandemic that has more than a third of the world’s population living with physical restrictions, Australia has something to be proud of.
Relative to other nations, we are in a strong position today. We have avoided some of the devastating scenes overseas, thanks to the efforts of government, health professionals and communities across the country.
Last week, the Doherty Institute released modelling that shows Australia has further lowered transmission rates due to the actions the community has taken. It also shows the strength of our healthcare system, good testing procedures, protocols for quarantining positive cases and manual contact tracing to track potential new infections.
The economic impacts from the coronavirus have been significant. Our data at the Commonwealth Bank shows many sectors have been severely impacted, such as travel agents and fitness centres, which have seen their revenue fall almost to zero, recreation and tourism where we have seen falls of 80 per cent, and restaurants and discretionary retail where sales are down 40 per cent. We are fortunate that strong government measures have been put in place to cushion the economic blow, keep businesses intact and support the people who have been most impacted.
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Push to strengthen privacy of proposed coronavirus contact app
· 12:00AM April 21, 2020
Privacy and data scientists are supporting the government’s plan for a voluntary contact-tracing app for coronavirus, but they said the proposed app’s privacy could be strengthened and urged the government to do so.
Four, Dali Kaafar and Hassan Asghar from Macquarie University and Farhad Farokhi and Ben Rubinstein from the University of Melbourne, published a paper this month on TraceTogether, Singapore’s contact-tracing app, and proposed an alternative model that delivers better privacy.
Scott Morrison said the Australian app would be based on TraceTogether.
The Australian Signals Directorate, the Australian Cyber Security Centre and the Cyber Security Co-operative Research Centre are taking part in a security review of the app, which may be released within a fortnight.
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Coronavirus: What you need to know about the government’s contact-tracing app
· 3:31PM April 20, 2020
The government is working through security concerns associated with its coronavirus contact tracing smartphone app as privacy questions are raised about the technology leaders are saying will help hasten the easing of social restrictions
The software is designed to help authorities track down anyone who has come into contact with confirmed cases of COVID-19, seeking to eliminate the risk of any forgotten interactions by recording the details of any two users of the app who come into contact with each other.
Scott Morrison has said Australia’s version of the contact tracing app has been modelled off a similar app introduced by the Singaporean government.
“We need to lift (contact tracing) to an industrial capability and we need to do that using technology and we need to do that as soon as we possibly can and we will be needing the support of Australians” the Prime Minister said at a press conference on April 16.
“If we can get that in place, if we can get our tracing capability up from where it is, then that is going to give us more options and Australians more freedoms.
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Is coronavirus the trigger for wide-spread use of robots in healthcare?
Antony is a medical reporter with a special interest in technology and pharmacy.
21st April 2020
It's commonly accepted that pandemics, such as COVID-19, are universally terrible, but they do have one shining light: they often help jump-start certain ideas that are ready to go mainstream.
Another is the use of robots in healthcare.
That’s not a reference to virtual doctors, like IBM’s artificial intelligence program Watson — although incidentally, IBM has offered a free version of Watson to governments in several countries to answer common COVID-19 questions and free up public health hotlines.
Physical, humanoid robots have been deployed in Chinese hospitals to do the dirty job of disinfecting surfaces, according to the state-run newspaper China Daily.
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Academics warn on virus app privacy
· 10:00PM April 20, 2020
More than 300 senior academics including around 240 professors across the world have signed a joint statement warning about privacy with contact tracing apps. They have specified the conditions under which contact tracing apps meet acceptable privacy standards.
One condition is that the app take-up is entirely voluntary, an issue which dogged Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who at one stage suggested it could be compulsory if not enough people downloaded and installed it. He later clarified it would be voluntary.
“The use of contact tracing apps and the systems that support them must be voluntary, used with the explicit consent of the user and the systems must be designed to be able to be switched off, and all data deleted, when the current crisis is over,” the academic said in the letter.
Macquarie University professor of computing Dali Kaafar, one of the signatories, said the letter had been signed by “the creme de la creme when it comes to researchers and practitioners in the field of privacy enhancing technologies and cyber security”.
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It pains me to say this, but when it comes to the virus app Barnaby Joyce has a point
Columnist and academic at the University of Technology Sydney
April 21, 2020 — 12.00am
It’s no surprise to me Barnaby Joyce is one of a number of politicians who will
refuse to use the official COVID-19 contact tracing app. I mean, the guy ran two lives and kept an affair from his family. He made a name for himself attempting to be stealthy, so a government-sanctioned electronic fingerprint wouldn’t really be his thing, would it? However, and it pains me to say it, on this one occasion, Joyce is right.
Australians, in general, aren’t too worried about privacy. That’s not some sweeping generalisation, that’s the conclusion of Deborah Lupton, professor in the Centre for Social Research in Health at the University of NSW, who’s been researching Australian attitudes to health privacy for years. Basically, we are chilled. For example, we know about
Cambridge Analytica yet we will use Facebook. We don’t really worry about targeted advertising. We know about #censusfail yet will still fill in the forms.
There is one problem, though, for a government attempting to roll out a new application that isn’t tested in the market. Australians don’t trust governments to manage technology. We don’t fear conspiracy but we do think our leaders will cock it up. “Australians don’t think that the government is going to do anything creepy [but] we don’t trust the government to ‘know where the on switch is on a computer’,” says Lupton, quoting one of her research participants.
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How Dropbox, and Australian hackers, uncovered Zoom's biggest flaws
By Natasha Singer and Nicole Perlroth
April 21, 2020 — 9.49am
One year ago, two Australian hackers found themselves on an eight-hour flight to Singapore to attend a live hacking competition sponsored by Dropbox. At 30,000 feet, with nothing but a slow internet connection, they decided to get a head start by hacking Zoom, a videoconferencing service that they knew was used by many Dropbox employees.
The hackers soon uncovered a major security vulnerability in Zoom's software that could have allowed attackers to covertly control certain users' Mac computers. It was precisely the type of bug that security engineers at Dropbox had come to dread from Zoom, according to three former Dropbox engineers.
With people, including comedian Hamish Blake, crashing private Zoom meetings, Technology editor Tim Biggs shares his 5 tips to stay secure when using Zoom.
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Author's Opinion
The views in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of iTWire.
Monday, 20 April 2020 10:25
Taxing Google and Facebook: premature rejoicing could be in vain
Much is being made of the fact that the government has told the ACCC to draft a mandatory code to make Google and Facebook (among others)
pay for using content from Australian news publishers. But has anyone thought of how the US Government would react to this?
The last time anyone tested the water on this front it was
France, which passed a law in 2019 to levy a 3% tax on American digital companies. Reacting to this, the US
threatened to hit French goods with a 100% tax.
The US Trade Representative also said it would investigate the digital taxes imposed by Austria, Italy and Turkey with similar tariffs likely.
The OECD is said to be working on a uniform tax for all countries under its rules and France has said it would pay back any excess if the OECD tax were to be less. But there has been no movement by the OECD on this front since then.
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Monday, 20 April 2020 09:05
Govt says digital platforms will have to pay for using local content
The Australian Government has asked the competition watchdog to developed a mandatory code of conduct before the end of July to make digital companies pay for the use of news from local publications.
In a statement issued on Monday, Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said the government had decided that this measure, which was originally supposed to be implemented in November if a voluntary code did not work out, had to be implemented right away.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission conducted an inquiry in 2018 and released the results to the government in June last year. The findings were made public in July.
At that time, the government said it would give its response by the end of the year; the shape of that was to ask the ACCC to work along with digital platforms like Facebook and Google to develop a voluntary code so that publishers were not disadvantaged.
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Why telehealth is making this doctor depressed
Dr Park is a GP on the Sunshine Coast, Queensland.
20th April 2020
I think I’m a bit depressed. Don’t worry – not the ‘quick someone call Rob, he might be about to do something’ type depressed, but rather just the ‘ho hum’ kind.
I couldn’t work out what it was. I was feeling just a general ‘funk’. But I think I’ve figured it out.
Telehealth is making me depressed.
I’m a computer geek — guilty as charged. So, when I heard that clinical consults might be going ‘online’ and we will finally get paid to dust off the ol’ computer camera and unleash the fancy coloured headset, I was excited.
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6 Tips to Comply with Privacy when employees are WFH
Most businesses have previously reviewed their physical and IT security measures in light of their general requirements under the Privacy Act, including the requirement to keep the personal information they hold secure.
But how can you continue to comply with this requirement when many of your employees might now be working from home? We’ve set out six tips below to help.
1. Secure the workspace
Encourage your employees to work in private places, where third parties are not able to see their screen or hear the content of their phone calls. In particular, remind employees that their backyard is not an appropriate place to take a business phone call, as neighbours or passers-by may be able to overhear them.
2. Avoid unknown networks
While free public Wi-Fi sounds great, it’s important to ensure that your employees know not to use public Wi-Fi or networks unknown to them, as data traffic between Wi-Fi enabled devices and public Wi-Fi networks can be easily intercepted. In order to ensure that your employees don’t inadvertently connect to any public or unknown networks, request that they update their device settings to not automatically connect to open networks.
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Coronavirus location data another thing for the government’s Google to-do list
· April 20, 2020
Now the federal government is standing up to Google it should also consider how the platform giant could use the new COVID-19 tracking apps to increase the location data Android phones are collecting.
Google owns the Android phone operating system, which accounts for around 55 per cent of mobile phone handsets in Australia.
The new virus apps aimed at telling you when you have come into contact with someone infected with COVID-19 will potentially feed into Google’s own location data collection.
The ACCC has taken legal action against Google over location devices, alleging false and misleading behaviour because it didn’t disclose how to turn off the location devices.
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Making Facebook and Google pay for Australian news is a wake-up call
April 20, 2020 — 12.00am
Forcing Facebook and Google to pay Australian publishers for news content will spark a series of crisis meetings at their headquarters in the United States.
A warning shot was fired in France this month when the competition watchdog told Google to negotiate licensing payments with local publishers for reusing news articles. But the Morrison government's decision is a direct hit on a tech industry whose worst case scenario here was
tougher regulations later in the year.
Details about how the government's proposed payment model will work are yet to be determined by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. It is unclear whether any payments by Facebook and Google to publishers will be material enough to help offset the loss of advertising revenue, exacerbated by the coronavirus crisis. Nor do we know exactly which publishers will be the beneficiaries.
However, it is safe to assume the new rules will damage Facebook and Google's bottom lines in a country where they collect
about $4 billion in gross revenue – and pay little tax. More worryingly for the tech giants, competition regulators across the world are watching Australia closely. The use (and misuse) of people's personal data, by Facebook in particular, the rise of fake news and the decline of traditional media outlets have made Big Tech an easy target for regulators outside the US. Indeed, the ACCC has led the charge globally, with its 18-month inquiry the most comprehensive investigation into these concerns undertaken in the world.
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'A level playing field': digital giants will have to pay for news
April 20, 2020 — 12.00am
Global giants such as Google and Facebook will be forced to pay for content in a radical overhaul of Australia’s $10 billion internet advertising business, in a bid to shield local publishers from the economic wreckage of the coronavirus crisis.
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg will impose a mandatory code on the digital giants after losing faith in their work on a negotiated settlement with Australian media companies to reimburse them for news and other content.
Digital giants Google and Facebook will be forced to pay for news content generated by the Australian media in a lifeline for the struggling industry.
The Treasurer will outline the plan on Monday after ordering the competition regulator to halt work on the voluntary code and instead prepare a new regime to be released in July and imposed soon afterwards.
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Why the telehealth utopia is still a distant dream
For an industry that still uses fax machines, the rapid shift to telehealth was never going to be seamless.
Apr 20, 2020 – 8.00am
On paper, telehealth sounds brilliant. It bridges the gap between cities and rural communities by lowering barriers to accessing health professionals, it’s more efficient, there’s less risk of coming into contact with someone else’s icky germs while waiting in the clinic, and – thanks to new government regulations – it’s easy to access a bulk-billed service.
In a few years' time, maybe even as little 12 months, there’s no reason this utopian vision couldn’t exist. But today’s reality is far from the seamless, efficient, digital native dream that’s being sold to the community.
The rapid shift to telehealth spurred by the COVID-19 outbreak and the consequent need for social distancing measures has meant the experience on offer today is far from perfect.
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Comments more than welcome!
David.
