Taskforce wary of proposed health and welfare access card
The Federal Government’s proposed health and welfare access card could lead to sensitive information being viewed by a wide range of non-medical people according to the government’s consumer and privacy taskforce on the access card.
The card is planned to replace 17 social service cards by 2010 and will include a section that allows the cardholder to store health information. But the taskforce has warned that “cardholders who chose to make use of this system must accept that they are putting sensitive personal information, effectively, into the public domain and that this is something which they may be doing for the very first time”.
Taskforce chairman Allan Fels said that the government had to consider whether the information was to be held for medical emergencies or if it was just for the convenience of the holder who could want to carry their medication list. Professor Fels said that if the card was for emergencies then it had to be readily accessible and “that means that anyone with an approved reader – including people in non-health and emergency situations – will necessarily be able to view it”.
Because of this, access should be limited to what is necessary to facilitate treatment in emergency,:Professor Fels said. And the taskforce recommended that any suggestion that
information such as a person’s blood type and HIV/hepatitis C status be included should be rejected.
