Electronic Health Systems in Australia
Discuss about the Intelligent Security and Privacy Solutions.
The scope of this report covers the privacy and security issues of electronic health systems in Australia. The report has limitations such as; only two aspects of eHealth systems are considered and it covers Australia only. The report has an executive summary, a table of contents, study’s background, methodology, discussion of literature, and a conclusion.
Medical information is extremely confidential as it includes private information of the parties involved. The traditional method of data recording and storage was paper-based. Today, health information can be entered and stored through the use of technology. The entire process of using electronic communication devices in the provision healthcare services make up the eHealth system. eHealth refers to the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) for the provision of healthcare services. The approach is used for communication purposes, sharing, storage, and disposal of healthcare data. The most common mobile devices include gadgets such as smartphones that have a web-enabled functionality, laptops, and personal digital assistants (PDAs). These technologies make it easy for individuals to access electronic health records (EHRs). Unlike paper-based health records, EHRs retrieval time is shorter and the process is less cumbersome (Sahama, Simpson, & Lane, 2013). The EHRs are used with various health records, including diagnostic information, pharmaceutical data, client and physician data, etc.
The data maintained in EHRs provide information when needed. For instance, a physician might use the information to diagnose and give prescriptions to a patient. Likewise, researchers and the management might request EHR for medical research or health administration purposes. The ideology that health records are accessible to various parties’ raises concern in the society even when the data is legitimately accessed (London School of Economics, 2010). The clients and other users might feel that their personal information can be easily accessed without their consent. Patient privacy and confidentiality are key and with the eHealth system, the two aspects may be difficult to achieve. Additionally, the data may be insecure because an individual’s device could be stolen or hacked and their health records details might fall into the wrong hands.
Privacy and security issues in electronic health systems can be adjusted by the use of technology. For instance, the system administrator may adjust access control, enhance user authentication protocols, and use tools such as firewalls to protect against external threats (Wenjin, Yidong, Yingpeng & Hong, 2016). The use of electronic training manuals would assist the users on how to navigate the system.
Privacy and Security Concerns
This business report uses the PESTEL tool for analysis. The acronym stands for political, economic, socio-cultural, technological, environmental, and legal changes anticipated for a given business.
In Australia, a total of nine parliaments exist and each has an opposition leader. They include federal, state, and territory parliaments (Australian politics.com, 2018). The current leader of the Federal Government is known as Malcolm Turnbull and his rank is that of a chief minister. The opposition leader at the federal level is Shorten Bill. Generally, the country is safe for investments. Australia’s regulations and politics are stable, open and progressive, giving businesses a sense of certainty and assurance (Agarwal, 2017). The conducive environment for business inventions is as a result of an effective response to economic hurdles and policymaking.
The government’s success in embracing changes in the economy makes the country the second most transparent nation. Compared to the United Kingdom or the United States, Australia has a low index of corruption (Agarwal, 2017). The international society perceives that Australia is less vulnerable to corruption. In the international transparency scale, the country ranks in the top ten nations with the lowest percentages of corruption (Bronitt, 2013).
The federal and state governments work hand-in-hand when it comes to Australian healthcare. Therefore, it implies that when the two administrations are in a state of discord, they might end up blaming each other (Duckett, 2014). In the end, the healthcare sector would suffer in terms of budgetary allocation. When the government imposes regulations such as co-payments for healthcare, the civilians reduce their visits to the medical centers. Some may forego visits that are important because of the high costs; in the end, the government is the one to suffer as it has to step in and provide assistance to such individuals. The regulations in Australia require that a service provider should maintain data security while he or she is using EHRs to deliver care. A controversy arises when the patients want their data kept confidentially and the physician wants to have more details on a client for better service provision (Grunwell, Batista, Sergio, & Sahama, 2015).
Australia is considered among the countries with a capitalist economy that is high. The main source of income for the population relies on the service, mining, and agricultural sectors. According to Agarwal (2017), the country achieves a tenth position in the ease of conducting business index. Other factors that make the nation a conducive environment for conducting business include progressive economic growth, low rates of unemployment, a stable financial system, low public debt, and minimal market restrictions.
Potential Solutions
The shortage of qualified healthcare providers results in an increased cost and pressurizes the available staff to work more than required (Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, 2008). Therefore, the systems require shifting of operations to a site where the healthcare providers can attend to as many people with a lesser workload.
The country’s widely used language is English and a majority of its citizens use it as a first language. The nation comprises of people of diverse cultural backgrounds, given the high levels of immigrants (Agarwal, 2017). In terms of religion, there is no main one and people have the freedom of worship. The life expectancy level for the country is high as opposed to that in other developed nations. The expectancy level for Australians is at 81.5 years (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2013).
In the period between 2011 and 2012, 55.1 percent of Australians above age 15 considered themselves to be of good health as compared to 4.0 percent who regarded their health to be poor (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2013). This scenario indicates that majority of the population have good health. Australia, in comparison to other nations, has a high index for the health of the general population (Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, 2008). The nation has a reduced rate of infection with major diseases such as asthma, cancer, or cardiovascular diseases.
The Australian government takes an active role in the participation of activities related to research and development of various areas including health improvement strategies. The government sets aside a significant amount of money meant for funding studies related to medical issues (Agarwal, 2017). The use of technology assists in reducing costs related to hiring more staff or working overtime. Defence Science and Technology Organization (DSTO) supports the government in research and development of military technology. The country has an effective communication channel between the administration, researchers, and the industry. The federal government allocates an estimated 55 percent of funds to research and development and an approximated 40 percent for industrial advancements (Agarwal, 2017). With time, the use of technology amongst the civilians of Australia has risen. For instance, in the period between 2016 and 2017, 86% of the households owned a steady internet (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2018). An approximated 91 percent of the homes with internet either used desktops, laptops, or smartphones for communication purposes. It is expected that by 2022, healthcare givers would be able to converse with colleagues and clients through secure systems (Australian Digital Health Agency, 2015).
Using the PESTEL Tool for Analysis
Organizations should consider issues related to global warming and climatic changes. The Australian government has put in place several acts related to environmental conservation. For instance, more taxes are placed on air transport to minimize pollution (Agarwal, 2017). The use of eHealth conserves the environment as individuals communicate online.
In Australia, the legal system observes the rule of law and the judiciary system is independent. The majority of Australians are usually affected by state and territory criminal laws (Agarwal, 2017). The eHealth system should consider these laws.
The use of EHR is critical for maintaining a healthy population. However, apart from benefiting the society and practitioners, the use of ICT devices brings about the issue of privacy and security violations (Avery, 2013). Only the government has the capability supporting the electronic health systems through proper coordination of regulatory measures for the use of EHR (Sahama, 2013).
According to Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu (2008), identification and authentication of users are necessary for security improvement. The EHRs should have the requirement that the users have a unique identifier. Also, information should be protected through the creation of a system that is consistent with the national requirements for consent and data privacy. The healthcare sector should come up with standards for eHealth usage, the appearance of messages, and information display. The eHealth system should also include a functionality that is responsible for authentication on message transfer between practitioners. For instance, a health center might stipulate that before a professional sends data to another person in a different unit, he or she should acquire the relevant clearance from the system administrator.
Data breaches result into the government tightening laws that act against cybercrimes. For instance, the administration improved the Privacy Amendment bill in 2017. The act requires that the responsible organization should inform users beforehand that there is the possibility of a security violation happening. This law took effect as of the 22nd of February, 2018 (Effective governance, 2018). Following these requirements means that the organization in question should strive to accurately solve the breach in order to retain its reputation and credibility.
Almost all of the information contained in medical records is confidential and it might include images that have private details of the clients. Consequently, regulations are put in place to ensure security and privacy of patient data is observed. Such a regulation is the Health Information Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), which provides details on how information is recorded and accessed (Erdal & Erguzen, 2016).
Political Changes
In some cases, valid access to medical information may raise concerns from the clients. To overcome this issue, Chen et al. (2012), suggests that the risk of re-identifying more details on a given data should be minimized. They propose that to overcome such vulnerabilities in a system, an excellent system to incorporate in the EHRs is the Tailor (HT) system (Chen et al., 2012). The HT ensures that database information can be easily accessed by the rightful users while at the same time singling out high-risk info for adequate system management.
Security issues in an eHealth system might arise from either application privacy or communication issues. At the communication level, the channels for data transfer become compromised from threats like re-identification (Blobel, 2011). For instance, eavesdropping on a secure communication channel might expose data that should not be accessible to the general public. On the other hand, application security is concerned with privacy and safety of healthcare services or personal data. The system can be enhanced through the use of authentication and identification functionalities.
Another important feature for a better eHealth system is the trusted authority component. The aspect is usually provided the cloud-based service providers (Foster 2013). The functionality would enable the users to have a key generated for them to be able to access the system or the data itself. Additionally, it allows the users to access the files by assessing their roles or attributes. For instance, a physician has a different role from the nursing officer. Once a person specifies his or her role and provides additional personal information, then they can access the site. The system should also consider the access of users who have been registered through the efforts of their physicians or other attendants (Ajmal & Ahmed, 2017). Once a user is registered their data keeps updating as certain attributes change. For example, for a given physician, when he or she changes residency, the system should auto detect their location, time, contact and update them in the system’s database.
Circumstances that compromise the integrity of data kept in EHRs is migration from one system to another. For example, when the administrator wants to store some backup files in the cloud, data might become destroyed in the process and some might vanish permanently from the database. Also, the cloud service providers might be able to view confidential data since the general database is visible to some users (Bahrami, 2017). Data storage in a cloud system is disadvantageous since there are no standardized architectures or layered protocols that protect the data. Cloud-based systems do not have the option for which users can customize their personal data.
Economic Changes
Conclusion
The report indicates that eHealth system has its benefits as well as disadvantages. To overcome issues concerned with security or privacy of data violation, different factors should be considered. The government must ensure rules relating to EHRs are regularly updated. The users should be included while any changes are likely to be made to the system. The issues with security or privacy can be addressed through the use of access controls. Also, the system administrator should regularly update the system and check for any signs of possible threats to the information. This report has limitations because it only assesses two issues only; security and privacy. It does not look at other attributes such as data manipulation, or corruption by users within the system. It also considers ICT in the healthcare sector in Australia only.
References List
Agarwal, A. (2017, September 7). PESTLE analysis of Australia. Retrieved from https://www.sachdevajk.in/2017/09/07/pestle-analysis-of-australia-by-anshita-agarwal/
Ajmal, M., & Ahmed, N. (2017). Privacy and Security Mechanisms for eHealth Monitoring Systems. International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications, 8(4). doi:10.14569/ijacsa.2017.080470
Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2013, June 7). Profiles of Health, Australia, 2011-13. Retrieved from https://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/[email protected]/Lookup/by%20Subject/4338.0~2011-13~Main%20Features~Self-assessed%20health%20status~10003
Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2015). Australia’s National Digital Health strategy. Retrieved from https://www.digitalhealth.gov.au/about-the-agency/publications/australias-national-digital-health-strategy
Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2018, March 28). Household Use of Information Technology, Australia, 2016-17. Retrieved from https://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/[email protected]/mf/8146.0
Australian Digital Health Agency. (2015). Privacy and security for digital health – Australian Digital Health Agency. Retrieved from https://www.digitalhealth.gov.au/using-the-my-health-record-system/maintaining-digital-health-in-your-practice/privacy-and-security-for-digital-health
Australian politics. (2018, April 9). Current Heads of Government and Opposition Leaders. Retrieved from https://australianpolitics.com/states/current-governments-and-oppositions
Avery, B. (2013, January 22). Opinion: Privacy may make or break e-health. Retrieved from https://www.cio.com.au/article/451355/opinion_privacy_may_make_break_e-health/
Bahrami, M. (2016). A Dynamic Cloud with Data Privacy Preservation. Retrieved from https://cloudfront.escholarship.org/dist/prd/content/qt03g6171c/qt03g6171c.pdf
Blobel, B. (2011). Intelligent security and privacy solutions for enabling personalized telepathology. Diagnostic Pathology, 6(Suppl 1), S4. doi:10.1186/1746-1596-6-s1-s4
Bronitt, S. (2013). Policing Corruption and Corporations in Australia: Towards A New National Agenda? China.
Chen, Y., Cheng, B., Chen, H., Lin, C., Liao, G., Hou, B. and Hsu, S. (2012). A Privacy-Preserved Analytical Method for eHealth Database with Minimized Information Loss. Journal of Biomedicine and Biotechnology, 2012, pp.1-9.
Delloite Touche Tohmatsu. (2008). National E-Health Strategy.
Duckett, S. (2014). The PEST (political, economic, social and technological) environment Graduation address. Retrieved from https://grattan.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Graduation-address-LTU-14-October-2014.pdf
Effective governance. (2018, May 2). The year in review? A look at Australian corporate governance in 2017 and what’s ahead in 2018. Retrieved from https://www.effectivegovernance.com.au/the-year-in-review-2017/
Erdal, E., & Erguzen, A. (2016). Proceedings of 54th the IRES International Conference, Florence, Italy, 28th-29th December 2016. Retrieved from https://www.worldresearchlibrary.org/up_proc/pdf/563-148534727921-25.pdf
Grunwell, C., Batista, D., Sergio, C., & Sahama, T. (2015). Managing and sharing health data through Information Accountability protocols. Practical Information Security Management.
London School of Economics. (2010). Electronic Health Privacy and Security in Developing Countries and Humanitarian Operations. Retrieved from https://personal.lse.ac.uk/martinak/ehealth.pdf
Wenjin, L., Yidong, L., Yingpeng, S., &Hong S. (2016). “A Secure Anonymous Authentication Scheme for Electronic Medical Records Systems”, e-Business Engineering (ICEBE) 2016 IEEE 13th International Conference on, pp. 48-55.
Sahama, T., Simpson, L., & Lane, B. (2013). Security and Privacy in eHealth: Is it possible? IEEE 15th International Conference on e-Health Networking. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/269329631_Security_and_Privacy_in_eHealth_Is_it_possible
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