Medical Totalitarianism? By Mrs Vera West

    The government has set up the Australian Digital Health Agency:
https://www.digitalhealth.gov.au
as a one-stop shop for medical records, or so they say.

     The My Health record system will collect the following information:
•    “Shared Health Summary – a clinically reviewed summary prepared by an individual’s key healthcare provider;
•    Event Summary – to capture key information about a key healthcare event relevant to ongoing care;
•    Discharge Summary – to support the transfer of a patient from a hospital back to the care of their nominated primary healthcare provider;
•    Specialist Letter – to capture key information about specialist visits;
•    eReferral – currently from GPs to specialists;
•    Prescription and Dispense Records.

     The system also enables individuals to add Medicare information, and to create their own personal health summary and health notes.
It provides access for participating individuals (people to whom the record relates, including authorised or nominated representatives) and healthcare providers via the following services:
•    Accessed via the National Consumer Portal and viewed through a compatible web browser;
•    Healthcare Provider: Accessed via the National Provider Portal, an integrated clinical information system, or a patient administration system, with specialist clinical software in use to create these.
Information in the system can be accessed as individual documents or through views which bring together clinical documents (such as prescription and dispense records) and displays them in a predictable way.”

    Sure, that’s what they all say. Why would anyone with good intent want to put together such a body of information which could easily be abused?  Rightly, privacy groups are outraged about this system which is going to have all of your health data, unless you choose to opt out:
http://www.couriermail.com.au/lifestyle/health/privacy-groups-outraged-over-failure-to-inform-aussies-about-a-new-government-health-record/news-story/5d1c7f980de28966d3ede764ae875cb6

     The government, which has your money to burn, has spent $ 1.7 billion on this system. It will record every public medical detail about you, such as prescribed medications, and whether you have had a sexually transmitted disease. The information, and this is the whole point of the endeavour, will be available via a court order for the ATO, police and other government agencies to use, almost always against you.

     The really important thing here is the opting out issue; obviously we could go on about the need of Australian to fight for freedom etc. etc. Remember, the Australian public, 61 percenters, voted for same sex marriage without protection of religious freedom. The majority of Australian may well vote for this digital surveillance, if they are told by Big Sister that it is needed.

     The minority of Australians who love freedom, should act against this example of medical totalitarianism. The information about the opt out period does not yet seem to be available, we do not know when it will start and end, but there will be three months to do this. The websites, as I read them give no hints. Of course the government, being slimy, rotten, evil, Satanic etc., will do nothing to help, and claims that it can’t publicise this information as it is already over budget.

     Thus, we will keep chipping away at this one. Our noble editor Arnie will make a note on his super-computer to keep the search going. When we find out how to opt out, you will be one of the first to know.

     We also need to keep an eye on “Big Data” projects such as Generation Victoria:
https://www.mcri.edu.au/research/priorities/generation-victoria

“In a world first, medical data from an entire generation of Victorian babies will be pooled to fast-track research into diseases like autism, depression and obesity.
Parents of all children born in the state in 2020 and 2021 will be invited to join the “Gen V” project and help transform Victoria into a “living laboratory”.

The initiative’s architects say it will accumulate medical information at the scale needed to tackle big health issues, allowing researchers to analyse existing data rather than being forced to recruit medical trial participants from scratch.

Up to 160,000 Victorian children will be included in the project, which will aim to keep imposts on parents to a minimum. “It’s basically business as usual for them,” said project leader Melissa Wake of the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute.

“It’s about working through existing services and data as much as possible, with some judicious additional data collected very infrequently, to get a better return on the huge investment that goes into services in Australia. This is the first time this kind of data has been brought together at a statewide level anywhere in the world.”
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/higher-education/big-data-project-offers-better-return-on-health-services/news-story/d71f61a4a8dece0afc74726022d4fab8

   The problem as I see it, is that the babies and children cannot give their consent, yet their personal data is being collected. What will be the future legal significance of this?