[LINK] Your Medicare records online

[Ivan Trundle]

On 03/03/2010, at 11:13 AM, Jan Whitaker wrote:

> In fact, the whole system is so mired in 

> bad planning that it may never see the light of day.

I'm sure that the former head of the AMA would suggest otherwise. However, I see no evidence of 'bad planning', since I'm not party to what they are actually planning to do, other than developing a new system with purported benefits for healthcare users.

However, it's interesting to listen to the anecdotal examples given: that people can more-easily access paper records than they can computer records. And that 'authorised healthcare providers' are the only people who can match the person's ID with medical records of any sort.

On the one hand, we complain that paper records are archaic and impossible to transfer from one healthcare provider to another, and seek a better system of doing so, yet we complain when they are digitised and made accessible. We can't have it both ways.

Yes, data honey pots are attractive to miscreants, and yes, security of any such data repository needs to be tight - but how do we properly reconcile the need to share data whilst maintaining privacy?

iT