The technology behind My Health Record has been labeled by international experts as the same as a “digitized paper”. Harvard Medical School International Healthcare Innovation professor Dr. John Halamka claims it uses technology that is so out of date that essential patient information may be unable to use used by the platform.
“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 digitized paper,” he told News Corp Australia.
An ADHA spokesperson defended the software, stating 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 and claims the organization and Health Minister Greg Hunt’s office have not been taking the worries of internal privacy experts on a serious note.
This result comes in response to extensive disapproval and concerns from citizens regarding the privacy of their information.
Mr. Hunt has defended the scheme, arguing it offers better benefits to citizens than the amount 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.
“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.”
