E-Health consultant and medico Dr David More accessed the audit trail on his own e-health record this week and revealed the "gobbledegook" result on his Health Information Technology blogsite.
The stream of confusing numbers that resulted showed the audit amounted to little more than a computer system log and that it was not designed for the purpose, he said.
"It's just not clear enough and not structured enough for ordinary citizens to work out what is going on," he said.
For the audit to have any meaning for patients it would have to show which doctor or health professional had accessed the record, he said.
The government has made patient control of the record, launched on July 1, a key feature and has promised that consumers who set one up will be able to check which doctor, hospital or allied health practitioner has accessed the information it contains.
The government has promised that the record will eventually contain a shared health summary, a record of patient medications, x-rays and pathology results and hospital discharge summaries and that it will save money by reducing medicine interactions and unecessary repeat testing.
This is information patients will be keen to keep private.
Consumers Health Forum chief Carol Bennett said the ability of consumers to track who had accessed their e-Health record was a "critical component" of the record and one of the key issues the forum had identified in their consultations on e-Health.
"For the audit to work it has to be user friendly and it currently isn't," she said.
"The National e-Health Transition Authority have to make it a high priority to make the audit user friendly so it can generate confidence that consumers have the ability to have control over who accesses their record," she said.
Australian Privacy Foundation spokeswoman Juanita Fernando said the audit trail data was "absolutely meaningless".
"How the heck is a consumer expected to interpret machine addresses, that's all they've got to track their record," she said.
More than a month after the e-health record was established doctors still can't use it because government delays mean the software is not ready.
Opposition primary health care spokesman Dr Andrew Southcott said the audit function was a "critical" part of the e-Health record.
"What we've got is not user friendly and this is another example of rushed implementation and no oversight by the minister," he said.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Sue Dunlevy
Quelle/Source: Australian IT, 10.08.2012
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