Australians have less than a week ((deadline: 31 January)) to opt out of the federal government's new MyHealth Record scheme.
Supporters of the scheme say having an online summary of people's key health information will help them get better treatment. But opponents say the scheme has too many security and privacy risks.
The scheme is dividing both ordinary Australians, and experts.
Public concern has already seen the deadline to opt out of the new MyHealth Record scheme extended to the end of January.
If a person doesn't explicitly opt out of the scheme by the end of January, they will be included in it.
The federal government says the scheme will help Australia's health system become better connected, and lead to better health outcomes for people.
It says people can even delete their record at any time, or stop some information being added to their record.
But there's been a large amount of public outcry about possibly security vulnerabilities in the scheme.
Professor Hugh Bradlow is the president of the Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering.
He's also the former chief scientist at Telstra.
He says the security risks of the scheme have been overblown.
"The benefits do absolutely outweigh the risks. Especially if you put the risks in context of the risks that exists for privacy today, which are not great. Doctor's receptionists have got access to your health records. And there's many human beings who have access to paper health records. So, the risks, I think, are somewhat vastly exaggerated."
Professor Bradlaw says a possible safeguard is to make it compulsory to have a patient access code in order for people to access MyHealth Record information.
This code would act like a PIN number on a debit or credit card.
However, as with many areas of modern life, the spectre of data breaches and hacking hang over this scheme.
Opponents point to an incident in Singapore, which they say is one of the most advanced countries in the world when it comes to cybersecurity, as an example.
In that country, 1.5 million electronic health records were breached, including that of the Singaporean Prime Minister.
Associate Professor Vanessa Teague ((teag)) is a senior lecturer in cybersecurity at the University of Melbourne.
She believes the privacy implications of even the secondary uses of people's health records are not being accurately explained. Ms Teague says hackers can find out confidential information about a person without even finding out their name.
"If you take a person's individual detailed record, even if you stripped off the most obvious identifiers, like their name and their date of birth, it might still be possible for a malicious party to figure out whose record that is, and hence, derive other personal information about their health from that record."
Ms Teague also says the nature of the implementation of the MyHealth Record program, in particular, which makes people have to explicitly opt out of it, will make it particularly hard on groups like new migrants, and some of those from Non-English speaking backgrounds.
"Well, I think anything where you put a lot of work in the way of getting people to express their opinion is differentially going to affect those people who find that work harder."
But some who work on the front lines of the medical profession say the scheme will actually help members of these groups, who may have difficulty communicating with a medical professional. Kristin Michaels is the Chief Executive of The Society of Hospital Pharmacists of Australia.
She says medical professionals having access to information through the MyHealth Record scheme will help deliver better care to people who are nervous or not fully informed about themselves.
“Potentially yeah, absolutely. One of the things I know we get- and we hear it from family and friends as well- people don't like having to tell and re-tell their story. And, absolutely, as you've said, people also don't always completely understand, maybe, what medicines they've been prescribed, or sometimes, even what they've been prescribed them for. So, in having to tell that story to multiple health professionals, and potentially, not being completely aware of what that story might contain, the opportunity for error for the health practitioner then is increased and increased. And, of course, that's not an outcome that we want to see for any of our patients, or anyone that we love and care for. So, really, the potential for the MyHealth Record, then, is to impact in that space- to give health professionals access to that information at the time, and in the way, that they need it to administer the best possible care."
Story by Sunil Awasthi, produced by for SBS
