[LINK] SMH: 'Medicare online'

[Roger Clarke]

[Comments embedded and at the end]

Medicare online
The Sydney Morning Herald (*article* not online though)
21 August 2007

The federal Government will spend $25 million over three years 
developing electronic health records [sic!] that will allow consumers 
to view their Medicare rebates online and check how much they have 
spent on medication.

"Patients will have secure access via the internet [sic] to a full 
record of their Medicare rebates", Health Minister Tony Abbott said 
yesterday.

"Within 12 months there will be similar arrangements to allow online 
patients access to their (Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme) claims 
history".

As part of the online health initiative, the Government would also 
roll out an electronic health record in remote indigenous towns to 
ensure the health problems of Aboriginal children were addressed. 
[sic - accessibility of a record is a mere fraction of what's needed 
to "ensure" health problems are addressed]


[The conflation of health insurance with health care is a blatant 
misrepresentation.

[The Medicare mandarins tried to bring you the Australia Card.  They 
fought for years to get the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme as a step 
along the way to becoming the central health care database.  They 
have an appalling record in relation to privacy (but fortunately also 
in relation to eBusiness), and shouldn't be let anywhere near genuine 
health care data.

[The strangeness is confounded by the Health Minister announcing 
something that's squarely in the Human Services portfolio.  My guess 
is that Medicare has applied for and got some funding out of the 
Health Dept that was earmarked for projects in the health care 
records area - but I stress that's an unresearched stab in the dark. 
My spare time is fully occupied chasing more important 
privacy-invasion rabbits down other holes.]

[Note that a lot of Medicare data is '10-minute consultation' stuff. 
But some of it is tightly or moderately condition-specific and hence 
much more sensitive (e.g. D&C, visit to an STD clinic).

[PBS data is dynamite from a privacy perspective, because the vast 
majority of prescribed pharmaceuticals these days are 
condition-specific, so much more is disclosed than just the 
prescription.]

[Online authentication has been a graveyard for a decade, and doesn't 
look like improving anytime soon.  So it doesn't take a very clever 
person to predict that there will be some very serious problems with 
these projects.


-- 
Roger Clarke                  http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/

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Visiting Professor in Info Science & Eng  Australian National University
Visiting Professor in the eCommerce Program      University of Hong Kong
Visiting Professor in the Cyberspace Law & Policy Centre      Uni of NSW