Insurance company Bupa wants the Federal Government to provide
anonymous patient data from the Personally-Controlled E-Health Records
(PCEHR) system to companies for research on Australian health.
Under legislation currently before parliament, only the consumer has
control over access to information in their own e-health record, and
decides which health practitioners are able to see what information
contained in their e-health record.
However, Bupa Health Dialog, a subsidiary of the insurance giant,
believes that this is far too constrained, and that in the interests of
research, all data should be anonymised and made available to research
Australian health consumers.
"Access to de-identified health data on the Australian population is
extremely useful to identify the needs and risk factors of Australian
health consumers," Bupa said in a submission to the parliamentary
inquiry on the PCEHR legislation...
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