Now that the Australian government’s My Health Record is opt out, it will most probably cover the majority of Australians. There have been many concerns raised. In order to opt-out, a person must go through a multi-step process to identify themselves with a drivers’ licence and Medicare card. Most people will not be bothered to go through this process.
A critical privacy issue with My Health Record is that each person cannot see who has accessed their health record. The lack of this visibility is a critical issue when the privacy of data is concerned.
In the future, health trends, just like DNA services such as 23andme from anonymised de-identified data will be able to be learnt from this data. Machine learning will make the analysis faster.
