IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

The Aboriginal Health Council of Western Australia says "crucial IT communication issues" need to be understood in the context of continuing reliance on satellite in remote areas excluded from the National Broadband Network.

When last year’s eCensus became the target of a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack, the Australian Bureau of Statistics needed to brace itself for scrutiny and analysis of what went wrong for a long time to come.

Following the hack attack, it was found that the Bureau’s relationship with IBM, which was hired to develop the eCensus, left the system vulnerable to potential cyberattacks, leading to a public backlash, most prominently as a Twitter hashtag ‘#censusfail’.

Most doctors support an e-health environment that provides the profession with reliable, key clinical information that can enhance their decision-making about the health care their patients require.

While doctors appreciate the potential benefits of e-health, it is difficult for private medical practices to establish a clear cost benefit, particularly general practices that will incur the greatest costs but derive the least direct benefit.

Patients in remote parts of Sweden are seeing doctors more promptly, owing to the country’s nationwide broadband policy.

Countries such as South Korea and Japan have seen soaring broadband take-up rates, but Sweden was one of the first countries to develop a comprehensive broadband policy focused on delivering community benefits. Sweden’s broadband take-up now rivals the Asian early-adopters, but it also has the most "digitally connected economy in the world", according to a World Economic Forum report.

That's the view of Kenneth Morgan, special advisor to the vice chancellor of Flinders University on cyber security and resilience, who discussed the future of e-health at CeBIT’s eHealth conference in Sydney this week.

Privacy foundation slams 'dangerously naive' Senators

Australia's peak privacy body has lambasted the country's Senate for being ignorant about the implications of the country's new e-health records.

What was once called the Personally Controlled Electronic Health Record (PCEHR), re-branded My Health Record this year to give it a smiley face, is the government's attempt to dragoon Australians into a national health database.

AGIMO claims it will drive a co-operative IT environment across federal government agencies to offer personalised services to individual citizens.

Australian government CIO Ann Steward points out that the second version of the draft strategy had been produced following input to a workshop conducted by the Secretaries' ICT Governance Board with advice from Ian Reinecke, iTWire states.

The exact make-up of this year's budget for the information technology sector is unknown, but major cuts announced in the government's mini-budget in November would hit from July, research firm Ovum said yesterday.

These cuts would affect not only the government sector but also suppliers to government, while IT staff cuts would hit the employment market, it said.

The report, entitled ‘Review of Information and Communication Technology for the Parliament’ and available in PDF format, was put together by former public servant Michael Roche and delivered in August 2012. It was released last week by the Department of Parliamentary Services, which oversees the operation of the Federal Parliament, including the Senate, the House of Representatives, politicians’ electorate offices and associated bodies such as the Parliamentary Library.

The scheme went live on July 1 with little fanfare because the department responsible for it opted for a soft launch that would allow bugs to be ironed out. By yesterday, 5029 Australians had registered for the personally controlled electronic health record (PCEHR), with 89 per cent of them registering online, despite triple that amount consenting to a shared record via GP clinics attached to Brisbane Metro-North Medicare Local initiative.

Figures obtained from the Department of Health and Ageing show that each individual to take up the personally controlled electronic health record system has so far cost the government $92,662.

Patients can volunteer to join the system, which stores all their health information, including test results and prescriptions, in a national database. It is the first time patients will be able to access their medical details.

The Government's $1 billion eHealth system reached 647,431 patient users on Tuesday. Of those 35,769 were from the ACT.

The most populous state, NSW, topped the tally with 202,677 registrations while the Northern Territory had the fewest with 12,816. But according to the Department of Health and Ageing by Friday registrations jumped to 665,328, an increase of almost 18,000.

A Senate committee last night also raised concerns the government's $470 million eHealth scheme may not be ready to go on its proposed starting date of July 1.

The Senate community affairs legislation committee said the government should rethink the key design principle of the system and consider switching from a model where patients have to opt in to one where they must opt out.

Last weekend, the National E-health Transition Authority(NEHTA) called for expressions of interest from aged care industry software vendors to join a panel and work together on the transition to the new standards set by the authority.

The rollout schedule for the Federal Government’s Personally Controlled Electronic Health Record (PCEHR) project is currently on track, according to the Department of Health and Ageing (DoHA).

DoHA deputy secretary, Rosemary Huxtable, told a Senate committee examining the PCEHR (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2011 that the “national infrastructure” for the e-health record is currently on track, with Australians being able to register for a PCEHR on 1 July.

Thomsons Lawyers special counsel Kathie Sadler says people using the government's personally controlled e-health record (PCEHR) system will have to address their own storage and security requirements to ensure ongoing protection of medical data.

"Each of the doctors, hospitals, aged care facilities and allied health professionals legitimately accessing the PCEHR system will themselves be subject to privacy and confidentiality obligations to the patient," she said.

New South Wales finance minister Greg Pearce has urged the state's ICT industry to participate in the public consultation on implementation of the government's ICT strategy.

A draft implementation update sets out the progress made in the NSW Government ICT Strategy's seven priority areas since it was launched in 2012 and the priorities for the state in 2013.

It's understood the budget will include $233 million towards the rollout of the national e-health system.

The funding will include about $160 million to operate a new personally-controlled electronic health record system, including registration and customer support.

"The legislation will strike the right balance between security and access," Ms Roxon said in a statement.

"Two rounds of consultation were held on this legislation prior to its introduction."

The eHealth record is an online summary allowing healthcare providers and hospitals to view and share an individual's health information, including diagnoses, allergies and medications.

The former government set up the $1billion initiative but failed to meet its target of having 500,000 patient users sign up by June 30, coming up short by about 100,000 consumers.