[LINK] Government wasting $485M on failed eHealth system

[Janet Hawtin]

Use fracking as an example.

Currently I believe doctors are being told they may not report fracking
related illnesses and it is difficult to get data on what chemicals are in
the fluid and in the waste water. There is a lot of money behind fracking.

If you have a health dataset that gives names of doctors and patients what
is the likelihood that those datasets will be edited to please powerful
interests. What impact would that have on doctors' capacity to treat
patients.

If a census type process reports anonymised data both in terms of the
doctor and the patient and diffused as per census data then the overall
statistics could be helpful. ie do not make it a monolithic system.
Separate the personal from the statistical data.  I think in our current
climate having explicit data on the whole nation offers a lot of ongoing
risk.

It would also reduce the cost if you're just having a standard format to
upload abstracted data from clinic data rather than holding everyone's
ongoing medical process online. Perhaps we do this already?? We have a lot
of other things we could do with that money.

CSIRO, Unis, ABC Science and education, retooling TAFE for renewable
technologies, data on ecology and polyculture.