Well it has been amazing and I have to say trying to keep up has made me feel rather like being as busy as a one-armed paper hanger!
I see this short note as trying to put together an impressionistic ‘first draft of history’
The main things I have noticed have been:
1. The public reaction has been more intense and more rapid than any-one would really have imagined. It seems that the lack of preparatory public information has been a major mistake on the part of the ADHA has been a mistake.
2. The Profession (AMA, RACGP) has rather been caught on the hop as far as their wholehearted backing being offered for years and then a few days later having to come out a few days later saying they support change as the Minister attempted damage control.
The current president of the AMA is clearly not suited for the role he has found himself in. He has little technical understanding and is basically just mouthing the talking points from the ADHA.
The former AMA presidents – especially Prof. Kerryn Phelps – have totally undermined his efforts and rather made him look like a goose.
3. The Digital Health Professional Groups (HISA, ACHI, HIMAA) have equally fallen into the same trap and have been guilty of not looking hard enough as the possible holes in the Government’s plans. Equally, and wisely, some key digital strategists have been pretty critical of what has been done for years.
4. The mainstream media have taken to the issues raised with considerable gusto with News Ltd. The Guardian, Fairfax and The ABC all running very significant coverage. There is a sense of emerging campaigns from both the ABC and NewsCorp.
5. The technical sites have, of balance, been pretty scathing and have been winding up their criticism lately (ZDNet especially).
6. The discussion of what is a breach and what is not has spun out of the spinners control and the ADHA is now looking pretty shifty. Additionally we have seen all sorts of paper and electronic health data breaches in just the last few days.
7. The ADHA Twitter account has been a model of irrelevance tweeting about tiny meetings happening in Perth while all hell breaks loose elsewhere.
8. ADHA media has been denialist and not prepared to even consider that there might be some downsides for some in having and using a myHR.
9. There has been a studied non-discussion of all those Australians who might be on the wrong side of the digital, health, intellectual or financial divide, and how they are to be dealt with in the world of the myHR.
10. It seems clear that trust in Government and Digital Technology is at a low ebb (Census Fail, Cambridge Analytica.)
All in all I reckon it has been an appalling mess which has damaged most it has touched. Both my polls and those of Pulse+IT see some pretty major damage having been done to trust and confidence in the myHR Program.
Stilgherrian gets it right I hear from Friday.
My Health Record: Canberra is still missing the point
No, Minister. It's not just about law enforcement access to digital health records. The Australian government needs to address all the concerns. A media circus in a playground won't help."There's a lot of interest around the My Health Record system," said Anthony Kitzelmann, chief information security officer at the Australian Digital Health Agency (ADHA). Such understatement! But fears about the security of ADHA's IT systems shouldn't top our list.
The My Health Record systems achieved "96.7 percent compliance" with the Australian government's Protective Security Policy Framework (PSPF) and Information Security Manual (ISM) at the protected level for health data, Kitzelmann told the SINET61 cybersecurity innovation conference in Melbourne on Wednesday.
ADHA is "always keeping in mind that this isn't our data. It belongs to our citizens, and it has to be held to the highest standards," he said. While developing its security controls, ADHA consulted with organisations such as the Australian Medical Association (AMA), the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP), and, allegedly, consumers.
While your writer did use the recent Singapore medical data breach to highlight the possibilities for misuse, no system can be perfect. There's currently no reason to believe that ADHA hasn't secured their systems to the best of their ability.
The real concerns were, and still are, the vast potential for misuse by the 900,000 healthcare workers who can access the system, ill-thought privacy controls, complex access control that will be difficult for ordinary humans to operate, the as-yet-unspecified "secondary use" of the data, and of course the extensive warrantless access by enforcement bodies.
Health Minister Greg Hunt has finally emerged from his state of denial, kinda. But apart from adding the ability to properly delete your record, his supposed backdown on Tuesday night really only addressed the last of those concerns.
Worryingly for Hunt, recent appearances have shown the minister thinks the privacy issues transmogrified a fortnight ago, when the medico associations raised their concerns."We've responded very quickly to the AMA and the College of GPs. They have spoken to us over the last couple of weeks, and therefore we have responded within a two-week period," Hunt told journalists earlier this week.
More here:
The last 2 paragraphs typify the whole ugly mess:
"BREAKING: The Australian Digital Health Agency has invited the media to a Sydney playground to film three generations of the one family who have a My Health Record," tweeted journalist Greg Dyett on Thursday morning.
Yeah, sure, that'll most definitely fix it."
What is your view? Have I roughly got it?
David.
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