Bert Van Manen (Forde, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's a pleasure to rise in this House and speak about the My Health Records Amendment (Strengthening Privacy) Bill 2018. I think the contribution by the member for McMillan covered a lot of the really important points. We're at a time today when we as governments have to look at how we utilise technology and the capabilities of the technology that is available to us to reduce the cost and the burden of red tape on our society. And I want to put on the record that I thank those opposite for putting in place a system such as this when they were last in government and also put on the record that I have signed up and registered for My Health Record, because I believe it is not only in the best interests of my future health and the management of anything that may arise as I get older, sadly, but, equally, of benefit to the Australian people.

I want to touch on an experience that I had on a recent visit to Taiwan early in July. We met with the deputy minister for health, and we discussed at length their electronic health system. It is a system that has a card with your photo on it and a smart chip. When you go into your local doctor, into the hospital or into a pharmacy, you swipe that card and it gives the medical practitioner, the pharmacy or the hospital access to your health record. But it provides access to your full medical health record. The benefit is that, whether it's the GP or the pharmacy or the hospital, they can see instantaneously what your health record has been and also, importantly, as the member for McMillan touched on his contribution, the drugs you're presently taking, the drugs you may have tried to take in the past but had a reaction to and the drugs they may be thinking of prescribing that may create an adverse interaction with the drugs that you're already taking.

I think this is where the My Health Record system has the potential to go. But the value of the potential in this system is the number of Australian people who take part in it. It's pleasing to see that some six million Australians have a My Health Record. Importantly, as I touched on earlier, the system has been operating without issue since 2012.

Any system of this nature will always be looked to be refined and improved upon. That is the nature of a new system such as this. But the importance of this system to me is the fact that it creates the capacity for the transfer and the accessibility of information. All of us in this place regularly speak about the importance of the information age and the ability to access and use information and data to make better decisions. I think that is the core strength and the core importance of the My Health Record. It gives our medical professionals, whether they be our local GP, whether they be the specialist, whether they be a hospital or whether they be a pharmacist—and I would suggest many of us in this place have more than one medical professional that we interact with over the course of a period of time—the ability to see at a glance your medical history so that they can make the best decisions on your health or a diagnosis of a health condition and so that they can give you the best advice possible for you to take action in regard to your health.

We have been talking in this place over the last few days about our aged-care system. One aspect of our aged-care system that is becoming increasingly difficult to manage is dementia. A system like My Health Record can provide enormous benefit to our senior Australians who are suffering from dementia in that they can rest safe in the knowledge that the medical practitioners who are providing them advice and treatment and looking after them have full access to and a full understanding of their medical situation. I think that is incredibly important.

I understand that, as with any new system such as this, some people have concerns about privacy. I had no such concerns, because I believed that the system was well set up from the outset. But it's always worthwhile to take the opportunity to improve systems such as this, which have an enormous amount of private data and information, to ensure that the privacy settings and the security that attaches to that are at the best level they can be so that the Australian people can be confident that access to their private medical information is limited to those who they give permission to. That is the core importance of this bill for me—that we strengthen the privacy protections to ensure that Australian people are confident that the My Health Record system is going to protect their privacy and their confidential medical records from access by those who are not permitted to access those records, or for nefarious purposes. The Australian people should feel confident that the system that has been put in place—and I'm sure it has support across both sides of this parliament—has the security measures and privacy protections in place that allow individual Australians to provide their medical practitioners with the access necessary to ensure they get the medical treatment they deserve.

If I look at the medical interactions I've had over the past few years, it would have been worthwhile for my medical practitioners in a number of fields to have access to necessary medical information without sending referrals, letters and paperwork. All of those sorts of things would be done in a streamlined, efficient system. I think the member for McMillan outlined it very, very well in his contribution. If we improve the efficiency and the transmission of information, and the ability for our medical practitioners to access that information on an appropriate basis, one of the things we do is immensely increase the efficiency of our medical system. Increasing the efficiency of our medical system is extraordinarily important, and is one of the reasons I supported My Health Record from its inception and support this bill.

The cost savings generated can be reallocated to providing additional services and funding for our hospitals, our medical practitioners and our Pharmaceutical Benefit Scheme. There are a whole range of opportunities created by improving the efficiency and efficacy of our medical records system and the access to that medical records system by our medical practitioners. There are also enormous cost savings in reducing incorrect diagnoses or prescriptions of medicines that may create unwanted interactions with other medicines that people are already taking. There is plenty of evidence of people being admitted to hospital as a result of medicines being prescribed in a situation where the prescriber, the pharmacy, has done nothing wrong but wasn't fully aware of the other medicines the person was taking, and it's created an interaction that has created a health issue for that particular patient. All of those things cost time, money and angst for families across our country.

The value of My Health Record and this bill in terms of improving privacy and security is in ensuring, as much as practicable, that we reduce the possibility of those events occurring. The value of reducing those events occurring is that the Australian people can trust that our medical profession is fully appraised of their personal medical situations. The greatest benefit is that it allows Australians who have serious medical conditions, and the rest of us, to be confident that the medical treatment that we are getting is the best in the world. I think our system actually is already one of the best in the world, but we can always improve it. I think the full use of My Health Record and creating confidence in the Australian people—as I said previously, we already have six million on My Health Record, but it would be great to see it at 10 million, 12 million or more—will ensure that the detail that we have in our system and the information we have in our system of people's personal situations ensures the delivery of the best health outcomes we can for the Australian people on an everyday basis. If the result of that is that we generate savings, then the best part of that is that we have the ability to reinvest those savings in our health network to make it even better for the Australian population on a day-to-day basis. And on that basis, I fully support this bill.

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