Haikerwal backs e-health confidentiality
The former AMA president says he has more confidence in patient security under the proposed e-health system than the current one.
Dr Mukesh Haikerwal has spoken out in support of the federal government’s proposed electronic healthcare identifier system, saying it will provide greater safeguards to health consumers.
The prominent Melbourne GP and former Australian Medical Association (AMA) president said the new system would promote confidentiality between doctors and patients.
“This confidentiality is equally important to both health professionals and the people they look after and without this, the system will not fly,’’ he said.
“Patient confidentiality is vitally important to us in our work and the good thing about the healthcare identifier is that it not only makes the system safer, more accurate and up-to-date, but it also carries with it additional safeguards over and above what exists today.”
Under the proposed health professionals will have to be authenticated prior to accessing the system.
It will also have an audit trail so that any individual will be able to find out if someone has accessed their health record.
The only personal information associated with each health identifier will be the person’s name, birth information, sex and address.
Dr Haikerwal said he had been involved in consultations with a wide range of groups, including privacy advocates over the past six months.
“You will never satisfy everyone in regard to privacy, but I have far more confidence in the future of e-health and the security of it’s records than I do in the current system,” he said.
“If confidentiality of the doctor-patient relationship is in anyway compromised I would have no part in it.”
