Health Privacy: The Draft Australian National Health Privacy Code and the Shared Longitudinal Electronic Health Record

Abstract

An explicit distinction between shared electronic health records and those at the point of care is required when referring to electronic health records. The former raises particular privacy issues discussed in this paper in relation to Health Connect and the Draft Australian National Health Privacy Code. In addition to a number of revisions to the code, the analysis recommends that related legislation such as archival and freedom of information law should be reconciled as much as possible within the code, so that a long-term view of the uses, retention and preservation of the longitudinal electronic health record is balanced with privacy, confidentiality and public interest.

Recordkeeping research tools in a multi-disciplinary context for cross-jurisdictional health records systems

“…This starting point arose from the large number of Australian Federal and State laws that mandate disclosure of medical information (Mendelson 2003;Paterson 2004;Iacovino 2006). In the case of privacy, it examined the impact on health privacy of health identifiers; records retained for the life and beyond of the patient and participant consent, in particular, the extent to which the system remained voluntary for both the patient and the practitioner, as consent to collect, use and disclose personal information is a basic privacy principle (Paterson and Iacovino 2004). A mental health case study examined the ethical, legal and recordkeeping issues of enabling third party access to shared electronic mental health records, in particular the capacity of a mental health patient to consent to participate in the system, and ethical theories that could equally be used to support respect for privacy as for respect for confidentiality (McSherry 2004a, b).…”

“…It appeared that by default it would be the Australian federal government, but issues of ownership of different parts of the system remained unresolved. In addition cross-jurisdictional issues were addressed, for example, whether the Australian Draft National Health Privacy Code would apply to all states (Paterson and Iacovino 2004). Thus, the recordkeeping research design took account of the legal and ethical analyses undertaken contemporaneously with the recordkeeping aspects of the project.…”

The long-term preservation of identifiable personal data: a comparative archival perspective on privacy regulatory models in the European Union, Australia, Canada and the United States

“…These trends include limiting the collection, use and disclosure of sensitive information such as that of racial, ethnic and political persuasion, and placing even higher protection on very sensitive personal data such as health-related information. At the same time, government policies world-wide are encouraging the re-use of personal data in shared networked environments by using unique identifiers to link personal data across jurisdictions and institutions, thus increasing potential privacy abuses in relation to secondary uses (Paterson and Iacovino 2004).…”