This blog is totally independent, unpaid and has only three major objectives.
The first is to inform readers of news and happenings in the e-Health domain, both here in Australia and world-wide.
The second is to provide commentary on e-Health in Australia and to foster improvement where I can.
The third is to encourage discussion of the matters raised in the blog so hopefully readers can get a balanced view of what is really happening and what successes are being achieved.
Quote Of The Year
Timeless Quotes - Sadly The Late Paul Shetler - "Its not Your Health Record it's a Government Record Of Your Health Information"
or
H. L. Mencken - "For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong."
Online end of life planning platform Safewill
has secured a $3 million Series A funding from Westpac’s Reinventure fund.
Safewill says it will use the funding to
further develop its product and expand its transparent approach to broader end
of life services. These include digital powers of attorney, professional
executor services, and Safewill’s own law firm to provide fixed-fee and end of
life legal services.
Safewill plans to rethink the modern
Australian funeral, as well as how people navigate through grief and death.
For Safewill
CEO and co-founder Adam
Lubofsky, his interest in changing how Australians die is a personal
one.
"I
started thinking about wills when a friend of mine passed away unexpectedly
without it. It was emotionally overwhelming, and was then followed by a
difficult and complex legal process that could have easily been avoided,” he
recalls.
“Safewill
is designed to make it easy for all Australians to protect their loved ones and
their life's work, and to bring an elevated level of dignity to death,” he
adds.
Co-founder
and director Dan
Bennett hopes to solve a significant problem faced by many families.
Is there any
aspect of our life they are not working to digitise?
In this case
the key business is a will-writing platform which has you answer relevant questions
and then prints a bespoke will – for a fee – which you sign – along with your
two witnesses.
As the
article makes clear the extra funds are to create a ‘will to death and beyond’
wrap-around service for the ultimate in post-demise services.
As we all die
one day I guess this is all needed.
Will be
interesting to see how it all evolves. I wonder will if fly?
Delivering effective care is a complex task,
but broadly speaking there are two new things you need to understand.
First, you need insight into the care of the
practice population, not just individual patients.
Second, you need insight into the ways
individual GPs, and the practice as a whole, contribute to providing that
care.
In days gone by, that was hard to do, but
with the rise of digital exploration tools that analyse what is happening to
patients and practice trends, the obstacles are being overcome.
These tools are growing in number. They
include programs such as POLAR, the extraction tool my
company, Outcome Health, has developed, but there are others
such as Doctors Control Panel, Pen CS and MedicineInsight.
A
feature common to all of them is the way they offer access to ‘business
intelligence’ dashboards.
These
dashboards can show a breakdown of your patients according to a particular
condition and age, and then show further breakdowns listing those with
high blood pressure, those who smoke, those with significant levels of alcohol
consumption and so on.
It
means you can find out how many patients have recorded a high blood pressure in
the past six months, and how many are too high despite being on
medication. From this, you can generate a practice-level list of those
patients.
In
effect, the software allows a practice to capture a performance outcome and
combine it with standardised quality interventions.
Outcomes
Take hepatitis, for instance.
Many
practices based in urban centres have a significant problem with hepatitis
because they are caring for high-risk populations from, say, migrant
backgrounds, or with a history of IV drug use.
By
combining demographic and clinical data, the ability to flag those who should
be screened and, should they screen positive, to keep track of the ongoing care
(ultrasounds, regular bloods) becomes possible.
This
type of information is growing dramatically in importance.
Federal
Government policies such as Practice Incentives Program Quality
Improvement (PIP QI) are now driving GP interest in a broader view of the
health of a practice’s population.
Health
policy in Australia does not yet directly link quality care of a practice
population to remuneration as it has elsewhere in places like the UK.
For
the time being, PIP QI payments are made simply for providing deidentified
practice data.
But
there is no doubt in my mind this will change.
This
may unsettle some, but it is not an unreasonable expectation that quality of
care, not just throughput, is used as a means to incentivise individual
practice as well as practice ecosystems.
Don’t put rubbish in
So how best to ensure the software benefits you and your practice and
ultimately your patients? Here are some suggestions:
Ensure
the data the tools analyse is coded correctly. For example, allergies not in
the allergy part of the electronic medical record means the software won’t be
able to check.
Is
the coding clear? A diagnosis of ‘COPD’ is not ‘presented with COPD, low
oxygen’.
Is
there a tool installed at the practice to analyse the data? Do you know how to
access it?
Is
someone monitoring the tool? How often? Like any software, it needs to be
updated and checked regularly.
Is
there a systematic data-based quality improvement process within the practice?
Do you look at the data, assess gaps and set targets?
Remember,
the people who generate the data should see benefit from using it. Then they
will make sure the data is good.
Do
you compare the performance activity within the practice? Which GPs do more
management plans? Which do more procedures? This allows for resource planning
within the practice.
Do
you compare the performance of your nurses? This is a whole-of-practice
activity, and nurses are important parts of the care team and important
generators of data.
Does
your practice have open conversations about all of the above? It is important
to see this data as a helpful tool, not a threat.
Good coding underpins good electronic medical records. It’s the
‘rubbish in, rubbish out’ principle.
Coded
records allow the software to process information to assist you in managing
your patient load. Accurately coded diagnoses are also important for decision
support and event reporting.
As
all doctors know, the clinical software allows you to record a diagnosis,
usually in a structured way, during the consultation.
There are a
few things that come from this for me.
1. Data
quality and coding of diseases are crucial.
2. There is a
great deal of value that can be derived from practice information that can
really make a difference to the understanding of the patients seen by the
practice.
3. EHR
systems will be used more fully and carefully if real time reports, using their
own data, are provided back to practitioners that add value to their
understanding of what they are actually achieving.
4. The
aggregate data provided to PHNs and the Government will only be improved if the
practitioners on the ground are seeing value from their data collection and
coding efforts.
Incidentally
understanding their data should also make them more careful about what is sent ‘up
the line’ to Government keeping an eye on potential exploitation and misuse of
their data. There is precious little reason for anything other than aggregate anonymised
data to leave the practice and this approach would be welcomed by privacy
advocates. Additionally it would be sensible to let all patients know how their
information is being used and the improvements it is encouraging and to obtain consent
for its use.
The
understanding of the value of internal data for the overall practice and its patients
clearly can add real worth to the work done in using the practice EHR.
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! Its 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.
‘Focus on the good’: Fresh whistleblower claims
Facebook let hate, criminal activity to go unchecked
By Craig
Timberg
October 23,
2021 — 11.47am
A
new whistleblower affidavit submitted by a former Facebook employee on Friday
(Saturday AEDT) alleges that the company prizes growth and profits over
combatting hate speech, misinformation and other threats to the public,
according to a copy of the document obtained by The Washington Post.
The
whistleblower’s allegations, which were declared under penalty of perjury and
shared with The
Post on the condition of anonymity, echoed many of those made by Frances Haugen,
another former Facebook employee whose scathing testimony before Congress this
month intensified bipartisan calls for federal action against the company.
Haugen,
like the new whistleblower, also made allegations to the Securities and
Exchange Commission, which oversees publicly traded companies.
The
new whistleblower is a former member of Facebook’s Integrity team whose
identity is known to The Post and who agreed to be interviewed about
the issues raised in the legal filing. Perhaps the most vivid moment in the
affidavit comes in a direct quote the whistleblower reported hearing from a top
Facebook communications official during the controversy following Russian
interference in the 2016 presidential election. The whistleblower’s name is
redacted in the affidavit.
The
whistleblower who testified to US congress earlier this month that Facebook
is putting “profits before people” has urged Australian politicians to regulate
the tech giant because it has even less incentive to clean up its act in the
smaller market.
In a briefing
organised by Liberal MP Julian Simmonds and digital rights group Reset
Australia, former Facebook executive Frances Haugen urged a group of
parliamentarians to stop putting faith in Facebook to do the right thing on its
own, and urgently develop regulations that would bring genuine oversight to its
platforms.
“Stop trusting
Facebook,” Ms Haugen told a group of parliamentarians including the Coalition’s
Anne Webster and Nola Marino and Labor’s Bill Shorten and Tim Watts.
“The question
of democracies being endangered is a real, real question.”
Earlier this
month, Ms Haugen told US lawmakers that Facebook’s leadership team knew how to
make the company’s platforms safer but was refusing to make the changes because
it would harm its “immense profits”.
New whistleblower accuses Facebook of wrongdoing:
report
AFP
October 23,
2021
A former
Facebook worker reportedly told US authorities Friday the platform has put
profits before stopping problematic content, weeks after another whistleblower
helped stoke the firm's latest crisis with similar claims.
The unnamed
new whistleblower filed a complaint with US financial regulator Securities and
Exchange Commission that could add to the company's woes, said a Washington
Post report.
In the SEC
complaint, the new whistleblower recounts alleged statements from 2017, when
the company was deciding how to handle the controversy related to Russia's
interference in the 2016 US presidential election.
The second
whistleblower signed the complaint on October 13, a week after Haugen's scathing
testimony before a Senate panel, according to the report.
The
metaverse is not a new idea. But if tech giants end up implementing it as they
plan, it could change how we interact with brands, services and each other in
ways that would have been unimaginable just a few years ago.
With
reports that Facebook is set
to hire 10,000 staff to create its new web paradigm, and that it
will soon
change its name to reflect that ambition, metaverse is making the
jump from tech industry buzzword to a matter of mainstream concern. So, what is
it?
The
term comes from science fiction author Neal Stephenson, who in 1992 imagined
the Metaverse as an evolution of the internet, where virtual reality gave
people the ability to explore interconnected digital sites as though they were
worlds.
Proto-metaverses
already exist in the gaming space. Look at Roblox or Fortnite, where users log
into a single virtual space but have access to tools for creation and sharing,
are exposed to sponsored brands and advertisements, can enjoy live music
festivals and other entertainment, and so on. There’s also Core, an online game
designed explicitly to act as a metaverse for interactive experiences, the
latest of which is an immersive music installation from artist Deadmau5.
Nepean
Hospital, a teaching hospital based in New South Wales, has teamed up with
Vantari VR to integrate virtual reality training into its curriculum.
WHAT
IT'S ABOUT
This
partnership will launch and deploy a new virtual training platform over a
three-year period. In a press statement, the VR startup said the platform will
be integrated into the training curriculum of the hospital's ICU department
with a specific focus on central venous catheter insertion.
The
partners will also develop a procedural training module to "facilitate a
component of airway management in critically ill patients".
WHY IT
MATTERS
As
Nepean Hospital is managing a heavy case load of COVID-19 patients, the new
training platform will help in raising the proficiency of its ICU clinicians
and trainees, especially in airway management. This skill has proven to be
essential during the pandemic when ICU patients with COVID-19 require
intubation.
The
Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) was established on 1
November 2010 by the Australian Information Commissioner Act 2010.
ISSN
2202–7262
Creative commons
With
the exception of the Commonwealth Coat of Arms, this Annual report of the
Australian Information Commissioner’s activities in relation to digital health
2020–21 is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Australia licence
(creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/au/deed.en). This publication should be
attributed as:
Office
of the Australian Information Commissioner, Annual report of the Australian
Information Commissioner’s activities in relation to digital health 2020–21.
Contact
Enquiries
regarding the licence and any use of this report are welcome.
Online:
oaic.gov.au/enquiry Twitter: @OAICgov Website: oaic.gov.au Phone: 1300
363 992 Mail: Director,
Strategic Communications
Office of the Australian Information Commissioner
GPO Box 5218
Sydney NSW 2001
The
independent privacy regulator for the My Health Record system and Healthcare
Identifiers Service has detailed its compliance and monitoring activity in its 2020–21 digital health annual report.
The
Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) regulates the privacy
provisions contained in the My Health Records Act 2012 and the Healthcare
Identifiers Act 2010.
Australian
Information Commissioner and Privacy Commissioner Angelene Falk said the annual
report highlights the OAIC’s work to ensure privacy measures for Australia’s
digital health systems are upheld.
“Over
the past year my office has worked proactively to regulate the protection and
security of the personal information at the core of both the My Health Record
system and the Healthcare Identifiers Service,” Commissioner Falk said.
….. Key 2020–21 statistics
My Health Record
Finalised one Commissioner-initiated
investigation
Completed 3 privacy assessments,
commenced an additional privacy assessment
Understanding compliance requirements for accessing My
Health Record – practical tips for your practice
These
one-hour sessions will equip Practice Managers and administrative staff with a
sound knowledge of how to implement and maintain policies and procedures to
govern access to the My Health Record within their organisation.
These
demonstrations will be run multiple times each week and at varying times
throughout the day.
Upon
completion participants will be able to:
o
Understand the legislative framework for accessing My Health Record
o
Create and maintain security and access policies for My Health Record
o
Manage My Health Record user accounts and training registers
o
Understand the importance of Health Identifiers and correct system
configuration
o
Designate roles and responsibilities for practice staff engaging with My Health
Record
o
Understand when and how to access information contained within a consumer’s My
Health Record
Any
data collected by the ABC through the use of the Google Analytics 360 Suite for
its iview service is stored in the US, according to the lone document released
to a security researcher who sought details about how such data is used.
As
iTWire
has reported, Dr Vanessa Teague, who runs the infosec outfit Thinking Cybersecurity,
lodged an FOIA request on 16 June, seeking full
information on data-sharing agreements signed by the ABC with third parties who
have access to iview data, including Google, Facebook and customer data hub and
enterprise tag management firm Tealium, and any other firm to whom the
broadcaster has granted access.
Her
request was knocked back and a request to
review the decision was also rejected, the latter on 6
September. However, the ABC released one redacted document, the
terms of service issued by the Digital Transformation Agency for the use of the
Google Analytics 360 Suite.
According
to this document, the service can be used for tracking website traffic and is
free for sites that record up to 10 million hits a month. As a Federal
Government property, the ABC has to subscribe to the service through the DTA
which has a paid subscription.
An
internal review by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation of its decision to
reject a Freedom of Information request from a security researcher, who sought
information on its sharing of data through iview, has upheld the original
decision.
The
decision was conveyed on 6 September to Dr Vanessa Teague, a researcher who
runs the infosec outfit Thinking Cybersecurity, and who lodged an FOIA request
on 16 June, seeking full information on data-sharing agreements signed by the
ABC with third parties who have access to iview data, including Google,
Facebook and customer data hub and enterprise tag management firm Tealium, and
any other firm to whom the broadcaster has granted access.
Rejecting
the request on 6 September, the ABC said, in part: "Having reviewed your
request, I have decided to:
"Release to you one document,
being the DTA [Digital Transformation Agency] Terms of Service, redacted
in part;
"Provide you with additional
information relevant to your request, as set out below; and
"Otherwise affirm the Original
Decision that the Identified Documents are not required to be released on
the ground that they constitute material communicated in confidence."
Dr
Teague was told that the ABC was upholding a decision that it could not divulge
details because the arrangements it had with these companies was exempted under
section 45 of the FOI Act because disclosure could lead to legal action against
it for breach of confidence.
In
what is a snub to the technology industry at large, the Coalition Government
has re-introduced the Security Legislation Amendment (Critical Infrastructure)
Bill 2020 into parliament for a second reading, not long after three major tech
industry bodies urged a significant revision of the bill before it is voted on.
But
the government has ignored this plea and followed the advice of the
Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security which, on September
30, recommended that the bill be split in order to pass what it characterised
as "urgent reforms".
The
PJCIS made 14 recommendations about the bill, including that it be split into
two parts, saying:
"Bill
One for rapid passage – to expand the critical infrastructure sectors covered
by the Act, introduce government assistance measures to be used as a last
resort in crisis scenarios as well as mandatory reporting obligations; and
"Bill
Two for further consultation – including declarations of systems of national
significance, enhanced cyber-security obligations and positive security
obligations which are to be defined in delegated legislation."
Doctors
and scientists are being harassed in their homes, receiving death threats and
being slandered in online spaces.
Their
offence in the court of public opinion? Offering comment on the covid pandemic.
This
episode of The Tea Room, TMR’s resident covid blogger and acclaimed science
writer Bianca Nogrady shines a light on the dozens of researchers and
physicians who have experienced abuse since the beginning of the pandemic.
Her
recent research on this topic was originally published in Nature
magazine.
You
can listen and subscribe to the show by searching for “The Tea Room Medical
Republic” in your favourite podcast player.
Digital
rights groups are pushing for more robust digital privacy regulations as
Australia moves into the next phase of the pandemic, warning that regulations
around personal data collection are not up to scratch.
The
blowback is directed at South Australia’s home quarantine app, which works by
contacting people in quarantine at random and requesting proof of their
identity and location within 15 minutes.
The
app uses facial recognition and smartphone geo-location as verification tools.
Failing
a check-in – which happens when the person misses their 15-minute window, is
located outside their home or is unable to be recognised by the app AI – prompts a visit from SA police.
NSW,
Western Australia, the Northern Territory and Victoria are in different stages
of rolling out similar apps for home quarantine. Queensland is a notable
exception, in that its app uses only geolocation data.
The
mass of conflicting information circulating online during the pandemic – or
“plandemic”, if you prefer – has not only been exhausting for all, but it’s
also contributed to a deep division forming in Australian society, which
mirrors a similar divide that occurred in the US with the coming of Trump.
Take
the prominent assertion that COVID
vaccines or their mandating transgresses the Nuremberg Code, which is a
post-World War Two guide to prevent involuntary experimental research being
conducted on humans, as the Nazi regime had been performing in concentration
camps.
The
code contains ten ethical principles, which include that medical
experimentation on humans must be consensual – via free choice, without
coercion – that such research shouldn’t cause death or disability and that
scientists must conduct any such tests.
The
online rumour is COVID
vaccines are experimental, so their use and mandating is against the code.
However, COVID vaccines have been officially approved in
Australia and overseas on a preliminary basis
so, they’re not considered to be ‘experimental’ and the Nuremberg Code cannot
apply to them.
Commonwealth
Bank of Australia will turn on a new technology system it has developed to use
the growing power of artificial intelligence to root out and prevent people
using its electronic payments system to send abusive messages.
Since
early last year, the bank has been seeking to tackle a problem whereby people
depositing funds in another person’s account figured out they could include
short messages instead of payment descriptions. These have ranged from harmless
jokes to serious cases of the system being used as a targeted form of domestic
and family violence.
CBA’s
general manager of community and customer vulnerability, Justin Tsuei, said the
bank’s AI labs had developed the new system to work alongside the automatic
block filter that was
implemented last year across its digital banking channels, using
machine learning techniques, including capability developed by Google to create
a powerful abuse detector.
The
scale of the problem is highlighted by the fact that more than 100,000
transactions were blocked by the automatic filter that prevents offensive
language being used, over a three-month period, and the new AI model detected
229 unique senders of potentially serious abuse, which were then manually
reviewed.
The
NSW government must strengthen data sharing laws to make them easier for
agencies to navigate, enabling the creation of “high value” datasets, a review
has found.
The
review of the Data
Sharing (Government Sector) Act 2015, tabled in state parliament
last week, found that amendments were needed to maximise use of the legislation
as a tool for data sharing.
The
review – which took into account five written submissions – found the Act’s
policy objectives remain valid, with data sharing and analytics now considered
“more important than ever”.
“Linked
datasets and data insights derived from them are increasingly viewed as
critical government assets and digital infrastructure,” the report from the
Department of Customer Service [pdf] said.
Australia’s
largest drinks and hotels business Endeavour Group has unveiled plans to use
predictive algorithms and facial recognition to identify problem gamblers
across its network, as part of its broader corporate responsibility and
sustainability strategy.
The
company, which owns and operates BWS, Dan Murphy’s and around 300 hotels and
pubs, has also confirmed it has no intention of opening a new Dan Murphy’s site
in Darwin after controversial plans to open a store near a number of dry
Indigenous communities was axed earlier this year.
In
June, an
independent panel advised that Endeavour, which was owned by
Woolworths at the time, should not proceed with building the site after it was
determined the company had failed to consider the significant negative effects
the store would have had on the city’s Aboriginal community and placed profits
above all else.
Steve
Donohue, Endeavour’s chief executive, told The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald a Darwin Dan Murphy’s
store was not in consideration, with the business announcing a new community
advisory committee would be established in Darwin next year to explore
initiatives that would reduce the harm caused by drinking and problem gambling
in the community.
Last
month, Dr Tanya Selak became a trending topic on Twitter.
This,
as many people know, can be a good thing — a signal that what
you have to say is of interest. And sometimes it can be a bad thing.
For
Dr Selak, whose original post carried the innocuous title "I’m a
vaccinated anaesthetist and this is how I shop for my family", it was
very bad.
Among
the 1400 tweets an hour she subsequently received were personal abuse and death
threats.
An
anaesthetist in Wollongong, she said she had been trying to offer the social
media world a little education based on the advice of NSW Chief Health
Officer Dr Kerry Chant.
Shop
only when you need to, wear a mask, sanitise, register on entry and exit,
physically distance and shop with purpose to limit time inside, was the
message.
Delivering
effective care is a complex task, but broadly speaking there are two new things
you need to understand.
First,
you need insight into the care of the practice population, not just individual
patients.
Second,
you need insight into the ways individual GPs, and the practice as a whole,
contribute to providing that care.
In
days gone by, that was hard to do, but with the rise of digital exploration
tools that analyse what is happening to patients and practice trends, the
obstacles are being overcome.
These
tools are growing in number. They include programs such as POLAR, the
extraction tool my company, Outcome Health, has developed,
but there are others such as Doctors Control Panel, Pen CS and
MedicineInsight.
Like Dr
Victor Frankenstein in Mary Shelley’s gothic novel, Mark Zuckerberg has created
a monster he cannot control. The recent revelations of The Wall Street
Journal’s Facebook
Files and testimony before US congress of product manager turned whistleblower
Frances Haugen, appear to have removed any doubt regarding the extent of
Facebook’s unwieldy problems, and the lack of willingness on behalf of its
leadership to deal with them.
Zuckerberg is
the largest shareholder, chief executive and president of Facebook. Yet the
most recent revelations about the failures of his company suggest he has lost
control of the product he created in a dorm room 17 years ago. Despite being a
trillion-dollar company, whistleblowers and investigative journalists have
exposed how Facebook is unable to prevent people being bought
and sold as slaves on its platform, or prevent people from selling subplots
of the Amazon rainforest to land speculators. Facebook’s executives have
even been unable to stop the platform from being used to incite genocide, as it
was in Myanmar in 2018.
But what is
it about Facebook’s platform that makes it so monstrous? On the face of it its
mission sounds innocuous. “Facebook was built to bring people closer together
and build relationships,” Zuckerberg has written in a company mission
statement. How could such a mission turn awry? Isn’t bringing people “closer
together” an unalloyed good?
In theory,
yes. But in reality, what Facebook and its algorithms do is catalyse sectarian
divisions by bolstering in-group identity while promoting out-group hate.
Nothing brings people “closer together” than hating a common enemy. And,
importantly, this is not a process that impugns any particular side of the
political spectrum. As each side is brought “closer together”, the further they
pull away from each other. In the US context, social media propels the Black
Lives Matter and transgender activist movements on the left and the Stop the
Steal and anti-vaccination movements on the right. What these movements have in
common is that they all rely on tribal solidarity animated by social grievance.
The
Federal Government has released its ransomware action plan, but cyber security
experts Claroty and Varonis say it falls short and needs greater commitment
from the government.
Scott
Leach, vice president of sales, Varonis Asia Pacific (APAC)
said, “any time the Federal Government recognises the increasing risk
ransomware poses to Australian organisations is a positive. However, there is
still room for improvement in today’s Ransomware Action Plan. There are a
number of actionable steps that the government could have included, with the
aim of improving compliance in a range of industries. For example, the
government could issue directives that encourage organisations to introduce a
range of positive cyber security measures by a particular date, such as a Zero
Trust approach and a strict policy of least privilege, which means employees
are only given access to the files necessary to do their jobs.”
"These
directives would have a significant and immediate impact on the organisations
who adopt them. Restricting access to an organisation’s most sensitive files
ensures that if a data breach ever does occur, the risk of attackers stealing
these sensitive files and moving laterally throughout the network is
significantly reduced. With little or no access to sensitive files, ransomware
is significantly less effective, saving organisations thousands of dollars (if
not millions in some cases) and taking the power away from hackers.”
Here are a few I have come across the last week or so. Note:
Each link is followed by a title and a few paragraphs. For the full article
click on the link above title of the article. Note also that full access to
some links may require site registration or subscription payment.
General Comment
-----
Quite a fun week
with a diverse collection of bits of news with a few being a little unexpected
– like the ADHA not following its own rules or getting others to!
My Health Record imaging services security failed ADHA password standards
Australia submitted 7% fewer data breach notifications
compared to last year, according to the agency responsible for dealing with
these notifications.
My Health Record system's physical and information security
measures used to access the My Health Record system for pathology and
diagnostic imaging services did not meet the ADHA's recommended standard for
passwords, according to assessments made by the Office of the Australian
Information Commissioner's (OAIC).
"In relation to physical and information security
measures, while most assessment targets reported good physical security
measures, most did not meet the ADHA's recommended standard for passwords used
to access the My Health Record system," the OAIC said.
Detailed in the OAIC's annual digital health report [PDF], the agency did note,
however, that most of My Health Record's assessment targets reported having a
procedure in place for identifying and responding to My Health Record-related
security and privacy risks even though there were areas for improvement in
relation to recording matters relevant to security breaches.
During the 2020-21 financial year, three data breach
notifications were submitted to the OAIC in relation to My Health Record. Two
of the three have been finalised.
Patients can now use online platform Healthengine to order
prescriptions directly to their door, thanks to an integration with delivery
startup Chemist 2U.
Healthengine is primarily used by consumers to book
appointments with GPs, dentists, physiotherapists and chiropractors.
Earlier this year, the Perth-based software company won a
Department of Health contract worth almost $4 million to build the centralised
covid-19 vaccine booking system.
Chemist 2U, meanwhile, is a relatively new player in the
space, having been launched in 2020 as a response to the pandemic.
Under the partnership between the two companies, consumers
can use the Healthengine platform to order same-day prescription medication
delivery free of charge.
It turns out HealthEngine isn’t the only medical appointment
booking software company raising capital.
As HealthEngine talks to institutional investors ahead of
its ASX debut, rival HotDoc is approaching venture capital funds, high net
worth investors and institutions for a $30 million Series D raise.
Like HealthEngine, its business has boomed off the back of
the COVID-19 pandemic, and it wants to make the most of the traffic.
Thanks to the vaccination surge, an additional 1.25 million
Australians used HotDoc to book an appointment in the September quarter. In
total, its service has been used by 11 million Australians, having added 4
million first time users in the past year.
The government will begin issuing internationally recognised
vaccination certificates to Australians fully immunised against Covid-19 this
week in preparation for the resumption of travel.
From Tuesday, those with a valid passport who have had two
jabs recorded in the Australian immunisation register will be able to obtain a
pass through myGov or the Medicare Express Plus app.
It will allow Australians to depart the country when borders
begin to open, starting with NSW from November 1.
The cross-border certificate, which will be available to
print or download, features a QR code that border officials can scan to verify
a person’s Covid-19 vaccination status.
The Visible Digital Seal (VDS) technology uses the ePassport
public key infrastructure that has been recognised by the International Civil
Aviation Organisation (ICAO) since 2004.
Australians who wish to travel abroad after the country's
international borders open on 1 November can obtain proof of their COVID-19
vaccinations to show at immigration control points abroad.
A statement from the Australian Government on Monday said
the proof of vaccination would be available from Tuesday for those who had
valid passports or valid visas and had their vaccinations recorded on the
Australian Immunisation Register.
The names of six ministers were listed at the start of the
statement, but not a single quote was provided.
The statement said the easiest way to obtain this proof of
vaccination was through Medicare on one's my.Gov account or by using the
Medicare Express app.
The Australian government has started producing COVID-19
vaccination certificates for safe overseas travel.
Citizens and Australian visa holders with valid passports
and who have COVID-19 vaccination records on the Australian Immunisation
Register can obtain this international proof of COVID-19 vaccination.
The certificate can be downloaded digitally or printed and
is compatible with COVID-19 travel apps, such as the International Air
Transport Association Travel Pass.
The proof of vaccination features a QR code that border
authorities can scan to prove a user's COVID-19 vaccination. According to a
government media release, it is "as secure as an Australian passport and
authenticated in the same way". It also meets the global standard
specified by the International Civil Aviation Organization and conforms with
the guidance set by the World Health Organization.
This
article has been updated, most recently on 22 October 2021, to reflect new
information about the use of the COVID-19 digital certificate in check-in apps.
With New South Wales already in the process of opening up following a prolonged
lockdown, and metropolitan Melbourne preparing to follow suit, the need for
people to prove their vaccination status is in the spotlight. These are among
the most frequent questions.
How
can patients get proof of their vaccination status? Services
Australia is encouraging people to access their vaccination proof online,
either through a COVID-19 digital certificate or Immunisation History Statement
(IHS). Both should appear via the Australian Immunisation Register (AIR)
shortly after patients receive their second vaccination dose – although this has
not always worked smoothly.
Both are available online through Medicare and can be accessed via the
patient’s myGov
account.
Patients should be able to view PDFs of the Immunisation History Statement or
the COVID-19 digital certificate here and print them off if required. -----
Covid-fuelled mental-health disorders are not expected to
peak until two years after the pandemic subsides, according to listed
telemedicine group Doctor Care Anywhere.
As Melbournians eagerly await to join Sydneysiders as
‘‘freedom day’’ draws near after more than 260 days of lockdowns, mental
illnesses are on the rise and are set to continue as health services combat
backlogs and pent up demand.
Doctor Care Anywhere chief executive and founder Bayju
Thakar, who is also a psychiatrist, said mental health disorders usually peak
about 18 months to two years following the end of a pandemic and does not
expect Covid-19 to be any different.
It comes after Australia’s biggest private hospital
operator, Ramsay Healthcare, launched a $3m public private partnership with the
NSW government to provide more mental health services to adolescents and young
adults.
Sigma Healthcare's Amcal and Guardian pharmacies have
partnered with Australian consumer healthcare platform Healthengine to deploy a
COVID-19 booking system.
The Healthengine Patient Appointment Management System
(PAMS) offers COVID-19 bookings for AstraZeneca and Moderna jabs, as well as
appointment settings for other health services.
WHY IT MATTERS
Their partnership comes as Australia is ramping up
vaccinations through the support of community pharmacies.
As part of their partnership, Amcal and Guardian have been
included in Healthengine's directory of healthcare providers, allowing them to
offer appointments via its marketplace and connecting them to its 4.3 million
users.
THE LARGER CONTEXT
Various booking platforms to assist the federal government's
COVID-19 vaccination drive have been rolled out across the country's health
system.
Australia-based FiveP launches communications tool initially developed for
Austin Health
The solution was developed as the healthcare provider needed
a way to streamline communications with staff rotating through the same
clinical role within a 24-hour period.
FiveP, a Melbourne-headquartered IT services company,
has launched a role-based messaging solution that it initially developed to
support clinical communications at Austin Health.
WHAT IT'S ABOUT
Developed with input from Austin Health, Baret is a
role-based messaging solution that is built inside Microsoft Teams. The idea to
create the app germinated from the deployment of Teams at Austin Health early
last year because of the pandemic, and the need for office staff working
remotely to communicate with clinical staff attending to COVID-19 wards.
As FiveP worked with Austin Health for this deployment and
noticed some of the clinical use cases, they developed a prototype to
demonstrate how role-based communications could be done on Teams.
GPs who don't offer telehealth consults by video say they
have little clinical benefit compared with the phone, patients don't like
them anyway and the system is blighted by
bad internet, the RACGP says.
As parts of the country entered their first lockdown in
April last year, only 1.3% of all GP attendances were conducted over video,
while 33% were phone consults.
In May this year, before the latest lockdowns, these figures
dropped to 0.29% and 17.1%.
Despite protests from GPs, the government rolled back
MBS items for phone consults, saying that video should be the preferred
telehealth option.
The college surveyed 342 GPs who had never attempted video
consults last year, with one in four suggesting they did not have the
appropriate software.
The Sydney Local Health District will continue using a
remote patient monitoring platform by ASX-listed healthcare IT company Alcidion
after extending their contract.
In July last year, Alcidion signed an initial 12-month
contract with the LHD to deploy its Miya Precision system to support the
virtual care delivery of Sydney's RPA Virtual Hospital (rpavirtual) for COVID-19
patients in home isolation.
With around 12,000 staff, Sydney LHD is serving over 700,000
people across central and inner-west Sydney. It oversees five hospitals,
including the Royal Prince Alfred and Concord Hospitals, and a range of
in-hospital and community-based support services.
WHY IT MATTERS
Miya Precision has been supporting the virtual hospital's
doctors with a clinical monitoring dashboard that consolidates information,
supporting their delivery of remote patient care. The platform is also helping
to reduce hospitalisations and improve recovery outcomes.
In 2023 GPs will only be able to use MBS-subsidised
telehealth items to contact the dead, it has been confirmed.
The new proposal put forward by Health Minister Greg Hunt,
following the cessation of Commonwealth covid hotspots, recommends that
telehealth items be restricted to a small cohort of patients who can
never, under any circumstances, be seen face to face; this basically rules out
the living.
Hunt told TMR: “The plan draws on extensive consultation
with the public and aims to promote equity of access to healthcare for all,
including the dead.”
Ghost Agnes McIntyre said: “I’m so pleased that my GP will
still be able to phone me. It gets awfully lonely in my attic and every time
I’ve visited the practice the receptionist has freaked out.
The Victorian government is refusing to reveal the cost of
its latest multi-million dollar contract with Microsoft for the state’s
Covid-19 vaccination management system (CVMS).
The system, which is used to manage the delivery of jabs to
Victorians in settings like mass vaccination hubs, was rolled out in mid-2021
as Victoria’s vaccination drive ramped up.
The Department of Health (DH) entered a deal with Microsoft to provide the end-to-end
platform based on its vaccination registration and administration solution in
January for $5.8 million.
It followed a five-day approach to market by the department
in late 2020 that began shortlisting candidates in a similar timeframe through
a “rapid evaluation process”.
Until recently, little attention has been paid to menopause
in the digital-health space.
But, crunch the numbers, and it becomes apparent that this
major life stage affects at least 2.4 million Australian women – or nearly 20% of the
female population.
The long hot summer of peri-menopause – an often
symptom-laden transition to menopause – takes an average of seven years. While
it starts, on average, around age 50, some women can start menopause as early
as their late 30s, sometimes after hormonal interventions for IVF or breast
cancer.
Fortunately, attitudes to menopause are also going through a
change, says Sydney GP Dr Ginni Mansberg, whose book The M word: how to thrive in menopause came out last year.
“Gen X are hitting menopause, and, unlike their mothers,
they have full-time jobs and they are outspending their millennial sisters,”
said Dr Mansberg. “And marketers are realising that this is a really important
consumer group.
Online end of life planning platform Safewill has secured a
$3 million Series A funding from Westpac’s Reinventure fund.
Safewill says it will use the funding to further develop its
product and expand its transparent approach to broader end of life services.
These include digital powers of attorney, professional executor services, and
Safewill’s own law firm to provide fixed-fee and end of life legal services.
Safewill plans to rethink the modern Australian funeral, as
well as how people navigate through grief and death.
For Safewill CEO and co-founder Adam
Lubofsky, his interest in changing how Australians die is a personal one.
Sydney-based Macquarie Health Corporation has started to
bring its core IT infrastructure back online, following a "cyber
incident" — a Windows ransomware attack — that was made public on 7 October.
In response to a query from iTWire, an MHC spokesman said:
"We have started to bring our core IT infrastructure online and are
currently rolling this out across our hospital network."
The FBI described
a Hive attack this way: "After compromising a victim network, Hive
ransomware actors exfiltrate data and encrypt files on the network.
"The actors leave a ransom note in each affected
directory within a victim’s system, which provides instructions on how to
purchase the decryption software.
Residents of rural and remote Australia often experience
disadvantages and inequalities when it comes to healthcare access and delivery.
There are only about 10 speech pathologists practising in remote and very remote
regions of Australia per 100,000 inhabitants, while in major cities there are
26 per 100,000 inhabitants.
Traditionally, access to speech and language sessions for
children has been restricted to in-person visits. As a result, access to speech
therapy for children living in rural and regional areas has been extremely
limited and non-existent in many remote areas.
However, the introduction of telehealth has played a
critical role in increasing accessibility to health care, as speech
pathologists across Australia have the resources to reach more children in
remote areas. Telehealth is rapidly becoming an essential part of speech
pathologists’ core business model, with research demonstrating that
telehealth-delivered assessments achieve comparable
results to in-person consultations.
Here, we delve into the role telehealth can play in
overcoming the challenges of delivering speech therapy services for children in
regional and rural Australia.
While
Australia’s rapidly ageing population will increase the demand for qualified
care workers, concerns about maintaining the quality of training for the sector
have been raised by industry provider AustCare.
AustCare director
Graham Surtees says there are approximately
179,000 jobs currently in the aged care sector, but with the government’s
prediction that it will need to double by 2050, there is now a huge demand on
the need for proficient training.
“The
issues are not only keeping up with the increasing number of carers required in
the aged care industry, but also addressing the quality of these carers, so
they have the skills to take on such a huge responsibility, which is ultimately
people’s well-being,” notes Surtees.
“We
have experienced a huge increase in demand to upskill people quickly, and the
easiest way to do this is via online study, but we also need to ensure this
meets industry standards including proficiency and compliance,” adds Surtees.
Pharmacy websites running on the Storbie platform can now
easily take advantage of Medmate's e-prescription and on-demand delivery
capabilities.
A deal between healthcare platform operator Medmate Australia and
website platform operator Storbie
means pharmacists using the latter's e-commerce facilities can accept
prescriptions and arrange delivery through Medmate's system.
Storbie already makes life easy for pharmacies thanks to its
existing integration with the major pharmacy point of sale systems.
The partners say the new arrangement makes Medmate-enabled
Storbie websites the most powerful e-commerce websites on the market for
Australia's independent pharmacies.
A funny thing happened to the National Broadband Network
(NBN) over the past year: it got faster, without getting more expensive.
It is no longer just the big-brand internet providers that
are achieving top speeds. Some of the cheapest NBN providers are now hitting
the mark during peak hours. This creates a money saving opportunity because you
no longer need to pay top dollar for maximum speed.
Switching broadband providers can result in significant
savings. You can keep $200-$400 a year in your pocket on a “standard” NBN plan,
even more on a “fast” NBN plan.
The NBN is just like our roads: there are peak hours. In the
network’s case, it is from 7pm to 11pm, when everyone goes online or turns to
broadband streamers for their movie or TV shows fix.
The NBN statement of expectations should be amended to
explicitly make NBN Co responsible for the working conditions of all members of
its extended field force, a senate select committee has said.
Subcontractors performing NBN work described difficult working conditions to the inquiry, with
jobs unevenly distributed, poorly paid, and handed to an unending supply of
inexperienced ‘technicians’.
The committee made a scathing assessment of the
“subcontracting pyramid model” used to farm out NBN work, which it said “facilitates
unsustainable employment arrangements for those at the bottom of the
subcontracting chain.”
Despite NBN Co downplaying industry-generated internet
usage numbers.
Aussie Broadband said its NBN bandwidth expenses were up 137
percent quarter-on-quarter, resulting in a $3.3 million overage bill.
The retail service provider said that its excess usage bill
would have been even higher - an estimated $5.1 million - for the three months
to the end of September, had it not been for rebates from NBN Co and a
‘windfall’ of sorts from an NBN pricing promotion.
However, managing director Phillip Britt said in an ASX
filing that the numbers supported the internet industry’s repeatedcalls for financial relief, similar to that offered
throughout much of 2020.
NBN Co and its five main retail service providers (RSPs)
have been at odds throughout 2021 on the extent to which RSPs bear the
increased costs of supplying broadband services while several states are in
lockdown.
