As part of my work, I've had to read a fair amount of the legislation and reports coming out in this sector and also the "Consumer Data Rights" legislation (similar to the UK's open banking scheme.<p>What I found was a massive difference in policy coming out from the same government but in two seperate streams of work.<p>A) Consumer Data Right (legislation being built into Australia Privacy Act) focusing on banking, energy and then telecommunications: The user has complete control of their data. If a consumer asks a business to delete, they must do so (except for information that is legally required).<p>B) MyHealthRecords: The government has complete control of your data. You cannot delete your account or your data.<p>I'll add sources if I can, but its in the legislation.
This is a problem every time the government launches a new service. They always have "an unexpected amount of traffic".<p>The last time we had a census the "census night" was totally bust since the majority of Australian internet users tried to use the online form and hardly anyone succeeded. They tried to blame it on "hackers".<p>Leading up to census night there were threats of fines if you didn't submit on time, but due to the shitstorm with their online failures people were still submitting their census data months later.
The Australian government is <i>paying</i> doctors to upload patient records to a centralised government controlled database.<p>The Australia government is incentivising doctors to <i>sell client data to the government</i>.<p>What part of this is ok in any sense?
I will be curious to see how this pans out - I have dual Australian and Estonian citizenship, and in the latter case I can tell you it's extremely useful to have centralised medical records, prescriptions etc. For my Australian medical records in MyHealth or whatever it's called, I have a couple of pages uploaded by my then cardiac doctor (after I had a suspected heart attack last November that ended up 'only' being something related to medication), and I've already used these pages with a related consultation here in Estonia. So, for me at least, this system has been quite useful already. I guess time will tell in terms of security and other important factors.
Anything IBM can do (with the census) - Accenture can do better, huh?<p>Waiting for the claims it's government sponsored Chinese hackers attacking the opt out website...
The Australian government gets away with a lot more authoritarian BS than other comparable governments, and there seems to be less of an emphasis on individual rights.
I wouldn't trust them with medical records.
There are problems with paper-based systems but they don't affect everyone to the same extent:
* I visit another doctor when on holiday - they don't have my records
* Certain treatments need the approval of my home doctor, it talkes longer than it should
* Harder to collate statistics that are supposed to show the state of the nation's health<p>But there are problems with an electronic system:
* A single point of attack
* No way to assure people it is ultimately secure, because it can never be
* Fluffy exemptions to the protection offer - especially if they are more far-reaching than existing exemptions used for accessing your paper records
* Creeping requirements mean that a few years later, the government might change what they can use it for.<p>At the end of the day, neither system can be measured in terms of risk or reward in any meaningful way - many advantages are theoretical and risks are downplayed - so you pretty much have to accept the centralisation of the worlds systems or move to a Banana republic!
It works now, opted-out, got email confirmation.
<a href="https://www.myhealthrecord.gov.au/for-you-your-family/opt-out-my-health-record" rel="nofollow">https://www.myhealthrecord.gov.au/for-you-your-family/opt-ou...</a>
As well as opting out, if you're concerned about privacy it might be good to contact your doctors directly to let them know that you don't give consent for your data to be uploaded in the first place.
I get that there's benefit to a centralized health database if you're in a country with socialized medicine, but if dealing with private doctors, why not let the market provide this capability? My primary GP uses one version [1], and I get that there would be several competing others until some convergence happens. But at least with these private providers, if one fails or falls out of trust, patients and doctors can move to another - your data isn't permanently locked with an untrustworthy government.<p>[1] <a href="https://healow.com/" rel="nofollow">https://healow.com/</a>
They even have a propaganda youtube channel<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8UWg1-qaHAOKrzJA17EHLQ" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8UWg1-qaHAOKrzJA17EHLQ</a>
> When citizens rush to opt out of an Australian government service, it says something about their levels of trust. When the system falls over under heavy load, it proves them right.<p>What a stupid conclusion.
Having a centralised system with health records is bad? I've had that since I was born in my country and I think it's useful and handy. Something happens to you, they know what could've been, if you're on meds, what things and meds you're allergic to, etc.<p>I guess the outrage makes sense when looked from an American point of view where you distrust the government by principle?