Public Health Informatics Information 2022

Running head: PUBLIC HEALTH INFORMATICS 1
Public Health Informatics
Name
Institutional Affiliation

PUBLIC HEALTH INFORMATICS 2
Privacy and Data Protection
Introduction
Australian eHealth landscape is rapidly developing. Key to Australian eHealth system is
the timely accurate information availability. Patient health information availability to correct
health provider (HCP) remains important issue. Poor patient information availability results in
severe medical and medication errors. However, making patient information increasingly
available raises series ethical and legal issues in respect of information privacy which focuses on
personal information regulation and hence a complex issues in regards to healthcare information.
This is due to the fact that privacy requirements of patient data and information requirement of
healthcare provider remain two competing concerns, and arriving at a suitable balance stays
challenging (Esposito, De Santis, Tortora, Chang & Choo, 2018).
How patient data is adequately protected according to privacy law?
Australia is regulating data privacy and protection via the blend of state, territory and
federal laws. Australian Federal Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) or Privacy Act alongside Australian
Privacy Principles (APPs) is applied to private sector. Privacy Act mandates the Privacy
Commissioner to perform probe that include its motion probe for Privacy Act enforcement and
further pursue penalties (civil) for egregious alongside serious violations or for recurrent APPs
violation when the entity fails to implement mechanism for remedy.
The patient data is specifically protected by other parts of federal legislation relating to
protection of data health records. Australia has laws on data protection and privacy for particular
data types and precise activities including Health Records and Information Privacy Act (2002),
National Health Act 1953 (Cth), the Health Records Act (2001) (Vic) deal with the privacy and
data protection related to health information.

PUBLIC HEALTH INFORMATICS 3
The patient data is also protected under the My Health Records Act (2012) (Cth), My
Health Records Rules 2016 (Cth) as well as My Health Records Regulation (2012) (Cth) that
establish the legislative framework for the government’s My Health Records System and the
Healthcare Identities Act 2010 (Cth) that regulates the utilization and disclosure of the healthcare
identifiers.
Australia has the best privacy laws that adequately protect the patient data which has
made Australia the leading country in the globe in the PCEHR. According to the Digital Health
Evidence Review published by the Australian Digital Health Agency, Australia remains amongst
the few economies that is leading the way in the providing people personal control of their
individual EHR (Thompson, Ravindran & Nicosia, 2015).
My Health Record system is effectively regulated by the My Health Records Act (2012)
(Cth), My Health Records Rules 2016 (Cth) alongside My Health Records Regulation 2012 (Cth)
which have established the My Health Records System’s the legislative framework used by
Australian government. The utilization and revelation of healthcare identifiers in My Health
Record System is properly regulated by Healthcare Identities Act 2010 (Cth) thus ensuring that
the patient information or data remains private and protected from access by any unauthorized
individuals. My Health Record systems remains a centralized “cloud” database which has
ensured effective control (Nøhr, Parv, Kink, Cummings, Almond, Nørgaard & Turner, 2017).
However, there are certain limitations with the Australian privacy law governing the
protection of patient data. As opposed to the New Zealand, the Australian’s information privacy
(IP) laws have not been pronounced as giving “an adequate level of data protection” in Article
25(2) of the European Union Directive 95/46/EC. Also, such laws (IP) shall never get an
identical pronouncement as per GDPR.