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Australia's new e-health platform crashes as people rush to opt-out

zdnet.com

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Re: Australia's new e-health platform crashes as people rush to opt-out

#21

Post by jazoom »

msamwald wrote: post #7
TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #2

The Australian government is paying doctors to upload patient records to a centralised government controlled database. The Australia government is incentivising doctors to sell client data to the government . What part of this is ok in any sense?

It seems overall okay if you accept the premises that A) A centralized health record system can do substantial good by improving effectiveness and transparency of healthcare processes, and enabling medical progress through data re-use. B) Doctors won't lift a finger to do extra work if they have no selfish incentive for doing so.

It's really not that much money as an incentive. Doctors won't do it unless they believe it's a good thing.

Source: I'm an Australian doctor.

Re: Australia's new e-health platform crashes as people rush to opt-out

#22

Post by shakna »

rjvbk wrote: post #19

Having a centralised system with health records is bad? I've had that since I was born in my country and I think it's useful and handy. Something happens to you, they know what could've been, if you're on meds, what things and meds you're allergic to, etc. I guess the outrage makes sense when looked from an American point of view where you distrust the government by principle?

Its not the idea that Australians mistrust - its the implementation. No great technical project in the last couple decades has been successful.

Under the current government we have the broken NBN, the fractured MyGov that has been repeatedly hacked, the falling over census website, other broken health care systems.

We can't trust that they can build it safely.

Re: Australia's new e-health platform crashes as people rush to opt-out

#23

Post by bigiain »

jpmoral wrote: post #8
danieltillett wrote: post #4

Anyone know who is the contractor running this fiasco?

Accenture, AFAIK.

Accenture - with Oracle and Orion Health - according to this: https://www.itnews.com.au/news/my-health-record-replatformin...

Hilariously, they've already let on they're not going to renew the Accenture deal - which no doubt will _highly_ motivate them to provide exemplary support and security over the next two years:

"The Australian Digital Health Agency has begun talks to replatform the My Health Record system ahead of the 2020 expiry of its multi-million deal with national infrastructure provider Accenture."

Re: Australia's new e-health platform crashes as people rush to opt-out

#24

Post by auslander »

auslander wrote: post #20
dav43 wrote: post #10

As part of my work, I've had to read a fair amount of the legislation and reports coming out in this sector and also the "Consumer Data Rights" legislation (similar to the UK's open banking scheme. What I found was a massive difference in policy coming out from the same government but in two seperate streams of work. A) Consumer Data Right (legislation being built into Australia Privacy Act) focusing on banking, ener…

> ... focusing on banking... - yeah. Commonwealth Bank Privacy Policy: 5. Who do we share your information with? - Service providers — for example, mortgage insurers, loyalty program partners and our product distributors - Businesses who do some of our work for us — including direct marketing, statement production, debt recovery and IT - support - Organisations involved in our funding arrangements — like loan purchas…

What's even more disturbing, is that Visa/MasterCard are possibly get itemised data from store transactions, like Milk BrandA, bread BrandB, Medicine Name, BrandC.

Re: Australia's new e-health platform crashes as people rush to opt-out

#25

Post by vertex-four »

jopsen wrote: post #15
TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

C) the database never gets hacked, or leaked, or otherwise exfiltrated

Even if there is a risk of this. It might be a risk worth taking. Edit: I don't know the specifics, but I sometimes wonder what good stats on more health records could do for future treatments.

I wouldn’t intentionally place my health records out of my own control, because I have significant risk to my life if those records become public. Having certain illnesses and medical history is inherently political in 2018 - being trans can result in violence against you, talking to your doctor about STIs - even just prevention - can get you kicked out of your home, having medicated/treated schizophrenia will result in losing job/housing/etc opportunities.

This isn’t going to change even if all those records become public in some way.

Re: Australia's new e-health platform crashes as people rush to opt-out

#28

Post by sorokod »

msamwald wrote: post #7
TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #2

The Australian government is paying doctors to upload patient records to a centralised government controlled database. The Australia government is incentivising doctors to sell client data to the government . What part of this is ok in any sense?

It seems overall okay if you accept the premises that A) A centralized health record system can do substantial good by improving effectiveness and transparency of healthcare processes, and enabling medical progress through data re-use. B) Doctors won't lift a finger to do extra work if they have no selfish incentive for doing so.

You can make the A) argument about any centralised database system. There is a down side and as always the challenge is finding the balance: the problems being solved Vs problems being added.

Re: Australia's new e-health platform crashes as people rush to opt-out

#29

Post by vertex-four »

Torwald wrote: post #6
ekianjo wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how is that compatible with doctor patient confidentiality?

Who protects doctors from attacks, when they get attacked because they value patient confidentiality over conformity to such governmental programs and maybe peer pressure?

In my country, healthcare professionals form a union - so hopefully them?

Re: Australia's new e-health platform crashes as people rush to opt-out

#30

Post by lbriner »

There are problems with paper-based systems but they don't affect everyone to the same extent: * I visit another doctor when on holiday - they don't have my records * Certain treatments need the approval of my home doctor, it talkes longer than it should * Harder to collate statistics that are supposed to show the state of the nation's health

But there are problems with an electronic system: * A single point of attack * No way to assure people it is ultimately secure, because it can never be * Fluffy exemptions to the protection offer - especially if they are more far-reaching than existing exemptions used for accessing your paper records * Creeping requirements mean that a few years later, the government might change what they can use it for.

At the end of the day, neither system can be measured in terms of risk or reward in any meaningful way - many advantages are theoretical and risks are downplayed - so you pretty much have to accept the centralisation of the worlds systems or move to a Banana republic!

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