“My Health Record Reform – A balance between the patient’s right to safety and clinician’s need to information or Not?” This has been one of the most debated issues in Australia, regarding the privacy concerns related to the use of this application. Despite of all the things which have been discussed, this initiative of Australian Federal Government has proven out to be extremely beneficial.
The Australian Federal government launched the My Health Record to provide a summary of the key health information to the Australians. It ensures better health outcomes for the patients and gives the relevant information to the specialists and doctors who are treating the patient. My Health Record can be seen as an online summary of the key health information of the patient. In the time period of 3 months, beginning from 16th July to 15th October, all the Australians were offered to opt out of the services of My Health Record in case they choose not to be entertained by this service and do not want their health records to be shared online (ABC, 2018). The governments of all the states and territories in Australia welcomed this application and extended their full support to it. These governments agreed to launch this service at the COAG Health Council in August 2017. My Health Record application also had full support of the all the medical councils of Australia including the Royal College of Australian General Practitioners, Australian Medical Association, Australian Healthcare and Hospitals Association Pharmacy Guild of Australia, the Consumers Health Forum and Pharmaceutical Society of Australia (Australian Digital Health Agency, 2018).
Since, the time this application has been launched, there have been debates among the laureates as well as the common public regarding the privacy of the health information displayed by My Health Record. The Australian Federal Government has taken all the measures which ensure the privacy of the safety information displayed online. They have ensured that the patients are able to view their health information from any part of the world using any device or computer which is connected to internet (Australian Digital Health Agency, 2018). This system will also allow the healthcare professionals to track the information about their patients such as their discharge summaries, shared health summates, dispense records, pathology reports, diagnosing imaging reports and prescriptions. Maintenance of health will be easy for both the patients as well as the healthcare professionals as a result of this service launched by Australian Federal Government (Australian Digital Health Agency, 2018).
As mentioned above, there has been criticism for this application relating to the privacy issues. Many people are not convinced by the privacy framework of this service as they believe that it resembles to the privacy system of a heath scheme launched by UK a few years back which failed miserably. According to the reports of The Guardian, this service uses the privacy framework which is identical to the privacy policy of a failed health system in England. The privacy framework of the service was breached by the hackers in England and they sold the data of the companies to the insurance and drug companies in the UK (Zhou, 2018). As per the reports, My Health Record stores the health data of the patients in Australia and shares it among the medical service providers to enhance the quality of service of the health and care for the patients. But, such data are is at high risk of being leaked or sold to the insurance and drug companies, which, in turn, use this data to increase the number of clients for them. It can also be seen as the breach of the privacy rights of the patients. Also, the person involved with the launch of care data in England, Tim Kesley, is the main person behind the development of the My Health Record privacy framework. The parallels between the launch of this service in both the countries have raised concern for the experts about the repetition of history and failing of this system in Australia as well (Zhou, 2018).
Another concern which has been raised by the privacy advocates is that, if, the healthcare data of the patients leaks anyhow, it may lead to discrimination in the society of the people who are suffering from diseases like AIDS and mental problems. Such debates have influenced many people of the country to think twice before enrolling themselves with My Health Record Service. Thus, in order to respect the rights of the patients to the privacy of their health information, the government has asked the non-interested people to opt out of the service before October 15th, or else, their health records will automatically be updated online. The “opt out” option has provided an appropriate and suitable balance between the right to privacy of the patients and the need of patient’s information to the health professionals (Beardmore, 2018).
The initiative of the Australian Government to allow the patients to opt out of My Health Record has respected the Health Information Law and Privacy Act 1988 of the Australian Federal Government. The law states that health information of the patients is one of the most sensitive types of personal information for a person and thus, any organization who deals with it, at any layer, must receive the consent of the individual before they collect or display the health information on any platform (Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, 2018). Also, the Privacy Act suggests that the health information of the patient must be provided extra protection while being handled. All the organizations which deal with the health information are covered under the Privacy Act and thus, they will be handled as per the legal procedures in case they are found guilty of handling the heath information against the law (OAIC, 2018). All the cases related to the releasing of the health information of the patient to any insurance and drug agencies will be handled and punished as per the guidelines mentioned under Section 95 and 95A of the Privacy Act 1988 (Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, 2018).
However, the Government of Australia has taken all the measures probable measures to ensure the privacy of the health data of the patients. All the health organizations of Australia have been working effectively in this field. The privacy framework of My Health Record has been developed in a way that it is more restrictive than the Privacy Act of the country. Thus, allowing government to upload the health data online must not be a concerning issue for the people. As the health data of the patients will be a very rich data source, hence, it will be given increased protections. They have the most experienced privacy organizations and employees for carrying out these functions (Australian Privacy Foundation Inc., 2018).
To resolve the privacy concerns of the individuals, My Health Record will be providing the feature of strict privacy control to the individuals. Using this feature, the individual will be able to control the display of medical information on My Health Record and thus, the healthcare organizations and the clinical professionals will be able to witness only that information. The patients can ask their health care providers to add only specific diagnostic reports online on My Health Record. The patients can also restrict the access to the specific information in their health record by using the Limited Access Code option. They can also apply the Personal Access Code to their entire health record (Yaxley, 2018). The people in Australia can also select the information which they do not want to be utilized for the secondary purposes. My Health Record website itself says that the health related data of the patient cannot be used for the non-health related purposes or any other commercial purposes. But the concern is that the similar privacy strategies were used by England as well but these strategies led to failure of the policy there. The privacy advocates argue that if any commercial healthcare company works for Australian Healthcare Services, they use the information intermediaries and the pharmaceutical companies which have the potential to leak the information at certain point of time, affecting the privacy framework of the system. However, it is a small theoretical risk which can grow further if, the privacy measures are not taken sufficiently enough. To resolve this risk, Australia has anonymised the data of the patients shared with the companies but, the critics argue that it will not reduce the concern for them as these companies can match the anonymized data with the data of other patient (Badge, 2018).
Despite of all the negative opinions associated with the launch of My Health Record, this system will help in resolving many issues related to the sharing of data between the patients and healthcare professionals. There are a few negative aspects of every new feature and policy, but if, the effective measures are taken to resolve them, they may prove to be a boon. The Australian government has put all the possible efforts to improve the privacy framework of My Health Record and comply by the guidelines imposed by the Privacy Act 1988 (Kwan, 2018).
References:
ABC, 2018. My Health Record opt-out period begins, but privacy concerns remain. [Online] Available at: https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2018-07-16/my-health-record-experts-say-its-safe-privacy-concerns-remain/9981658 [16 October 2018].
Australian Digital Health Agency, 2018. For healthcare professionals. [Online] Available at: https://www.myhealthrecord.gov.au/for-healthcare-professionals [16 October 2018].
Australian Digital Health Agency, 2018. My Health Record opt out date announced. [Online] Available at: https://www.myhealthrecord.gov.au/news-and-media/media-releases/my-health-record-opt-out-date-announced [16 October 2018].
Australian Digital Health Agency, 2018. What is My Health Record? [Online] Available at: https://www.myhealthrecord.gov.au/for-you-your-family [16 October 2018].
Australian Privacy Foundation Inc., 2018. My Health Record. [Online] Available at: https://privacy.org.au/campaigns/myhr/ [16 October 2018].
Badge, J., 2018. Opinion: privacy concerns on My Health Record need to be addressed. [Online] Available at: https://www.themandarin.com.au/96380-opinion-privacy-concerns-on-my-health-record-need-to-be-addressed/ [16 October 2018].
Beardmore, F., 2018. Research Australia Welcomes My Health Record Reforms. [Online] Available at: https://researchaustralia.org/research-australia-welcomes-my-health-record-reforms/ [16 October 2018].
Kwan, B., 2018. The three month opt-out period has begun for the My Health Record database amid digital security and privacy concerns. [Online] Available at: https://www.sbs.com.au/news/stay-or-go-my-health-record-opt-out-met-with-fierce-debate [16 October 2018].
OAIC, 2018. Data breach preparation and response — A guide to managing data breaches in accordance with the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth). [Online] Available at: https://www.oaic.gov.au/agencies-and-organisations/guides/data-breach-preparation-and-response [16 October 2018].
Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, 2018. Health information and medical research. [Online] Available at: https://www.oaic.gov.au/privacy-law/privacy-act/health-and-medical-research [16 October 2018].
Yaxley, L., 2018. My Health Record privacy concerns will be addressed, Malcolm Turnbull promises, amid ongoing criticism. [Online] Available at: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-07-26/my-health-care-privacy-concerns-to-be-addressed-turnbull-says/10039342 [16 October 2018].
Zhou, N., 2018. My Health Record privacy framework ‘identical’ to failed UK scheme, expert says. [Online] Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/jul/22/my-health-record-identical-to-failed-uk-scheme-privacy-expert-says [16 October 2018].
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