Hackers threaten to leak health data of Australian celebrities

Sydney (AFP – link in Spanish) – Hackers have threatened to leak the health data of a thousand stolen Australian celebrities in a digital attack on an insurance company. Medibank, one of the country’s largest private health insurance companies, said the hackers claimed to have stolen 200 gigabytes of data.

“The criminals provided a sample of data from 100 policies,” it said in a statement on the Australian stock market. “These include data on the location in which a patient received the medical service and codes related to their diagnosis and procedure”.

Cybercriminals threaten to leak or sell data, starting with 1,000 Australian celebrities, if the company doesn’t pay a ransom. This attack follows another last month against a telecommunications company in which the personal information of some 9 million Australians, almost a third of the population, was exposed.

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Robots made from frog cells may define future of healthcare

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German experts: EU wants to set health data standards

EU Commission to define data formats, writes Pharmazeutische Zeitung (link in German). It will be the task of the member states to process e-prescriptions, e-patient summaries, image data, laboratory results and discharge reports into a common European format. Digital health authorities designated in advance in each individual country are to take over this task. These in turn are connected at the same time via the common digital infrastructure called “MyHealth@ EU”, managed by the EU Commission . The responsibility of the Commission should include defining the formats for data exchange. In the future, cross-border projects for secondary data are to be run via the second infrastructure called “HealthData@ EU”. This is planned to be decentralized, so the member states will continue to manage their own health data . However, there is currently no obligation to recognize each other’s data approvals. The EU distinguishes between primary use of data, for example for e-patient files, medical devices or high-risk systems, and secondary use, by which the EU means a trustworthy and networked environment for research, innovation and policy-making. Among other things, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) should serve as a basis. However, since it is about sensitive health data, further regulations will soon have to come into force, concludes Pharmazeutische Zeitung

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CIFS ran an all-day session at the Week of Health and Innovation (WHINN) in Odense

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New HIMSS book out on blockchain in healthcare

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