Australians have a three-month window to opt out from having their information stored digitally as part of a My Health Record, yet 20,000 requested their information to be taken offline on the first day of the initiative.
Every person in Australia is automatically being rolled onto the new system, which is an online summary of personal health information that is uploaded online by care providers to make it easier for doctors to keep track of patients’ health information in one place.
The hope is that having a patient’s entire medical history in one place will make visits to multiple specialists easier for them and their care providers. More than 5.9 million people have already been rolled onto the digital My Health Record, almost 13,000 health professionals are connected to each other and an additional 6.5 million clinical documents have already been uploaded to the system.
Australia’s peak health bodies, including the Australian Medical Association (AMA), the Royal College of Australian General Practitioners, and Pharmacy Guild of Australia, have all supported the push for health records to go digital, but thousands of Aussies are opting out because they are concerned about privacy concerns.
While the AMA supports the move to go digital and bring information that exists separately in the health system to one online portal, even it couldn’t confirm the safety of data.
“No one can guarantee the ultimate security of any system and I’m not an IT security expert. But it’s a balance between usability and utility versus all the benefits of having that secure, reliable source of summary of all the health data that can be brought together in the one place in time,” AMA President Tony Bartone told Sky News on Wednesday.
While many people are concerned that more than 12,000 different health organisations and 900,000 health professionals around the country could access the technology is not that simple.
“It’s very important that people understand that ultimately no one can just jump online and check on Mr X or Mr Y, unless there’s a relationship and an express authority to do that,” Bartone said. “So that requires levels of information and personal details of the patient that you’re treating, and then that patient would have to consent to that whole process. And then, the patient can also have certain levels of access control, and override that. So it will set its own personal security level.”
The Australian Digital Health Agency said Aussies will be able to manage privacy and control access to their personal account including the information that gets uploaded and which family members, carers and healthcare providers get access.
“This empowers them to share and control their health information with doctors, hospitals and other healthcare providers from anywhere, at any time,” it said.
Prime minister Malcolm Turnbull has backed the digitalisation of health records and said he will keep his own medical records on My Health Record. During a 3AW interview on Tuesday, he said the program had “the highest security”. He also blamed a technical glitch as the reason why thousands of Australians had to wait more than an hour to opt out of the service earlier this week. The glitch has now been corrected.
Security experts around the country don’t share the same enthusiasm as Turnbull, fearing a major privacy breach is inevitable.
“In an environment where we seem to be hearing about a new data breach practically every few days, My Health Record is yet another privacy and security nightmare,” University of Queensland Associate Lecturer Liam Pomfret said. “Our health records are some of the most sensitive information we have, yet the privacy controls My Health Record offers to patients are dubious at best.”
He also said like most things on the internet, the record is basically there for ever. Opting out doesn’t stop the information from existing somewhere on the internet. Meanwhile, Vijay Varadharajan, Microsoft Chair Professor in Innovation in Computing Director, acknowledged that there is a growing trend in information going digital, but there were flaws in My Health.
“From a technical point of view, there are access controls in place, however, the data itself, at this stage, is in plain format, it is not encrypted,” he said. “Hence there is a potential for leakage if a breach occurs. With the growth in malware and security attacks, we cannot rule this possibility out.”
Australians have until October 15 to opt out if they don’t want to share their information online. This can be done by accessing the My Heath Record website or by calling 1800 723 471. Anyone wishing to opt out will need a Medicare Card and either a driver licence, passport or ImmiCard as a form of identification.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npPOvalwd14
The Government has assured the public that the strongest safeguards possible will be used to protect data. It previously invested $374.2 million over two years to expand the digital health system.