My Health Record- greater than the sum of its errors?

The technology behind My Health Record has been described by international experts as nothing more than “digitised paper”. Harvard Medical School International Healthcare Innovation professor Dr John Halamka claims it uses such out of date technology that crucial patient information may be unable to be ready or shared by computers.

“The My Health record is a noble idea but the standard they chose is from 1995; it uses PDFs, it’s not computable, it is just digitised paper,” he told News Corp Australia.

An ADHA spokesperson defended the software, replying that “Over 100 clinical information systems are accredited to connect to My Health Record and they consume structured data such as SNOMED [Systematised Nomenclature of Medicine] codes on diseases and AMT [Australian Medicines Terminology] codes on medicines. This functionality is driving decision support and other logic in those systems through those computable codes.” 

This criticism comes after My Health Record’s privacy chief quit early last month amid claims the organisation and Health Minister Greg Hunt’s office have not been taking the concerns of internal privacy experts seriously enough.

Whole Ms Hunt and ADHA have refused to comment, Ms Hunt has since joined ANZ Bank.

The agency has since announced citizens will be able to opt out of My Health Record at any time and permanently delete their records.

Previously, if an individual had not opted out by the given deadline, it couldn’t later be deleted- only made ‘unavailable’.

This decision comes in response to widespread criticism and concerns from citizens regarding the privacy of their data.

Mr Hunt has defended the scheme, arguing it offers greater benefits to citizens than the sum of these challenges.

“If you are a mum, you will be able to have access to the vaccination records of your children,” Mr Hunt told the Nine Network.

“If you have got older parents and you don’t know what medicines they have been on, and they are in an extreme moment in a hospital, the emergency department will be able to protect them and ensure they are not taking something for which they have an allergy.

“It is common sense and something that six million Australians have adopted. It will give all Australians access to their medical records, which should be a basic right.”

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Written by: Claire Dowler

Claire is the manager of Akolade’s government and digital portfolio. She’s passionate about emerging digital trends, particularly in the public sector. In her spare time she enjoys picking up heavy things and putting them back down again and animals are her favourite kind of people. 

Follow me on LinkedIn for information regarding future Akolade events as well as future blog posts @ Claire Dowler