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Australian Health Minister Greg Hunt has ordered an urgent review of Australia's biggest online doctor booking searching HealthEngine which has given hundreds of user's medical information to lawyers. This is how ambulance chasing works in the 21st century. No need to chase actual ambulances, just scan the medical records of people looking for clients. HealthEngine is partially owned by Telstra, which may explain this behaviour.
Prominent law firm Slater and Gordon confirmed that HealthEngine passed a list of potential clients to them on a daily basis averaging 200 per month which netted them at least $500,000 in legal fees. The app collects data such as whether or not the medical problem was a workplace injury making it easy to target potential clients for the lawyers to chase. The privacy policy for the app makes no mention of sharing the information with third parties for marketing purposes. While there is a collection notice, this information is not readily obvious to users many of whom are unaware that their private data is being sent on to other companies.
[...] HealthEngine and Slater and Gordon both declined interview requests and did not respond directly to questions.
HealthEngine said in a statement the company used advertising to "deliver relevant and timely information from our many different advertising partners to our users."
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 18 2018, @02:50PM (4 children)
Australia seems to have a lot of issue with online services. Just take a peek at their latest health record fiasco [zdnet.com].
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday July 18 2018, @04:27PM (2 children)
I would say throw more hardware at it. But then, they probably didn't have the foresight, or even understand how to construct a scalable system.
The US government has also been guilty of now knowing how to build a website. I seem to recall something called Healthcare.gov? The obvious solution is to hire a big well known name in technology. Someone on the trailing edge. And throw a lot of money at them. That will work.
Young people won't believe you if you say you used to get Netflix by US Postal Mail.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by sjames on Wednesday July 18 2018, @10:47PM (1 child)
Considering that the system crashed under the load of people opting out, perhaps they chould just make it opt-in. They shouldn't have much load problem supporting all 3 people who actively want it.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 19 2018, @02:25PM
It was opt in. To justify the 2 billion spent on it they are now going opt out.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 20 2018, @02:35PM
That's just sad