Former news editor of the notorious Newscorp
publication The Sunday Times which was involved
in the UK hacking scandal, former
Executive Director of Transparency and Open
Data
in the UK Cabinet Office and then National Director for Patients and
Information and head of the toxic
government Care.data project which
stored patient medical information in a
single database. before ending up as
the commercial director of Telstra
Health in Australia, Tim Kelsey, was appointed as CEO of
the Australian Digital
Health Agency by the Turnbull Coalition Government to progress the
stalled My Health Record national
database in 2016 with a salary worth $522,240 a year.
A curriculum vitae
which may go some way to explaining why
reports
are beginning to emerge of individuals seeking to opt-out of My Health Record
finding out they have been registered by stealth in the Australian national
database some years ago.
Crikey.com.au, 18 July 2018:
The
bureaucrat overseeing My Health Record presided over a disaster-plagued
national health record system in the UK, and has written passionately about the
belief people have no right to opt out of health records or anonymity.
Tim
Kelsey is a former British journalist who moved into the electronic health
record business in the 2000s. In 2012, he was appointed to run the UK
government’s national health record system, Care.data, which was brought
to a shuddering halt in 2014 after widespread criticism
over the sale of patients’ private data to drug and
insurance companies, then scrapped altogether in 2016. By that stage,
Kelsey had moved to Telstra in Australia, before later taking
a government role. There was considerable criticism about the lack of
information around Care.data, and over 700,000 UK people opted out of the system.
Kelsey
vehemently opposed allowing people to opt out — the exact model he is
presiding over in Australia. In a 2009 article, “Long Live The Database State”, for Prospect…..
For
Kelsey, this was necessary for effective health services…….
Kelsey
also expressed his opposition to the anonymisation of data, even of the most
personal kind…...
Kelsey’s
vision was of a vast state apparatus collecting, consolidating and distributing
private information to enable an interventionist state.
Moreover,
he stated others should have access to data…..
ADHA,
Kelsey is doing little to fix his reputation for controversy. On Saturday,
ADHA released an extraordinary 1000-word attack on News Corp health journalist Sue
Dunlevy who correctly pointed out the strong risk to privacy
in the My Health Record system. The statement repeatedly criticised Dunlevy,
accusing her of “dangerous fearmongering” and being “misleading and ignorant”.
Dunlevy
had rightly noted the lack of any effective information campaign about My
Health record (exactly the criticism made of Care.data), prompting ADHA to
boast of its $114 million campaign at Australia Post shops, Department of Human
Services “access points” and letters to health practitioners. It makes you
wonder why even News Corp’s Janet Albrechtsen said she’d never heard of My Health Record until last week….
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