A recent boost in federal funding for a shared e-Health report system has re-opened the debate about the protection of patient medical records. Alberto De Angelis reports.

Paper records may soon be forgotten as the e-Health system takes over. Image: afagen

CeBit Australia, the annual global business conference begins today at the Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre and will be running e-Health workshops and conference to discuss the potential for a nationalhealth record database.

The Federal Government’s $467 million push for the establishment and implementation of an e-Health system however, has raised questions over the protection and control patients will have over their medical records.

The database would allow the health details of voluntarily registered users to be viewed and added to, by registered healthcare providers.

However, while the sharing of healthcare records is voluntary, every person who is in the database will still be issued a healthcare identifier.

These identifiers are numbers that not only link an individual to their health records, if they have volunteered to do so, but also personal information such as name, gender and date of birth.

Dr Chris Mount, acting assistant secretary of the e-Health branch of the Department of Health and Ageing confirmed the automatic assignment of identifier numbers at a privacy forum last week.

“The health record is voluntary, everyone gets an identifier… it’s just a number,” he said.

Dr Mount defended the initiative at the forum claiming the e-Health system can protect patients and their information.

“If you separate the clinical flow and the money flow you create a natural avoidance of fraud … you can tell who’s been accessing these documents.”

Dr Mount ensured that patients will have control over what is in their record.

Yet others are still worried about access to the records.

“I’m most concerned with the people taking care of it,” said Dr Juanita Fernando of the Australian Privacy Foundation.

She stressed that the Government must make an effort to clearly and transparently communicate the details of the scheme to the public.

At the forum, Dr Mount conceded that there is the possibility of other unauthorized medical providers accessing the health records saying that at the moment the details are not, “clear cut.”

This means that under the rules of a local medical practice, other doctors at that practice may access the information if they have a clinical reason.

According to Dr Mount, similar programs are working effectively in Canada, Holland as well as various Scandanvian countries.

He said that the United State’s new health revolution is also planning to implement a shared medical records system.

However, Dr Mount also mentioned at the forum that after extensive government investment in England, a version of the scheme is struggling to operate effectively.

Tim Robinson, an archivist at Sydney University claimed that in some ways, electronic records were safer than their paper counterparts.

“After you send out that paper its got a life of its own, anyone could see it,” he said.

According to Robinson, the most important part of privacy control is the destruction of records which is made easier when the records are in electronic form.

The e-Health program is still in the design and development stage however it seems inevitable that it will proceed.

Read more of e-Health coverage from Reportage Online – Australia not ready for e-Health.