Opting Out of MyHealthRecord
Today marks the beginning of the opt-out period for the nation wide medical information database called the "my health record". If a person does NOT want their medical information stored in a government run database, they have until October 15th to leave the program.
Despite concerns about privacy from the public and interested groups, Dr Steve Hambelton from the Australian Digital Health Agency said, "I can absolutely categorically state that none of the ... My Health Record data will be able to be sold to third parties — that's absolutely prohibited,"
But despite calls from the government for trust in the system, personal privacy remains a point of contention in the medical database. Could it be hacked by a malicious party? What safeguards are in place? Just who has access to the data?
To discuss privacy concerns I spoke to Dr Katina Michael, professor in the School of Computing and Information Technology at the University of Wollongong.
And later on in the show, Rohan McKnight, Digital Health Manager South Eastern NSW Primary Health Network, a company contracted to gather some of the data, joined us.
Citation: Katina Michael with Lindsay McDougall, July 16, 2018, "Opting Out of MyHealthRecord", ABC Illawarra 96.7FM, https://soundcloud.com/doctormcdougall/my-health-report-soundcloudmp3