The botched rollout of the compulsory My Health Record (MHR) is about to be forced on millions of unsuspecting Australians as the Government creates a mega database about the private lives of every Australians. As the new Member for Wentworth, Kerryn Phelps and the Senate Inquiry found it was currently not fit for purpose, data could be sold to private companies for commercial gain, and the Government is not telling Australians what it was planning.
“The MHR is no longer the well intentioned community based collaboration of doctors and IT specialists with their patients for an e-record,” said Dr Tim Woodruff, President, Doctors Reform Society. “It is now a top-down government compulsory data collection scheme”
“The MHR as it now stands is close to useless for most patients because the Government has failed to implement it properly and it now poses a high risk to patient privacy and eventually, to the doctor-patient relationship,” said Dr Woodruff
“The benefits at present are weighed much more heavily towards a mass data collection of people’s private medical information with future possible secondary uses of the data, rather than to improve patient care”, said Dr Con Costa, Vice President.
“At a minimum, the Government should abandon the compulsory roll out of this scheme as recommended by the Senate Inquiry,” said Dr Costa. “The pretence that people can opt out is a sham as the Government knows most people aren’t aware of what’s happening because the Government has not spent the time and resources to inform most Australians.”
