Health Records & Information Systems

Women's Health Action takes a particular interest in access to and ownership of health records. We are also interested in the implications of the use of unique identifiers in health records and linkages between records. Informed consent is a key consumer issue in the use of health records. Developments with electronic health records pose new challenges and possibilities for health consumers. The following papers, articles and submissions look at issues related to health records as well as privacy and information systems.

• Sacred Secrets Meet Cyberspace - WHU November 2006

• Consumers, Security and Electronic Health Records, The Information Science Discussion Paper Series, University of Otago, Number 2006/11, January 2006

• Anxious about electronic health records? No need to be, Journal of the New Zealand Medical Association, 26th September 2003, Vol. 116, No. 1182

• McGoogan report provides reality check on progress on cervical screening - WHU April 2002

• Health information at fingertips - WHU Jan 2002

• Law changes for auditing the National Cervical Screening Programme: How far should they go? - Sandra Coney, Executive Director, Women's Health Action Trust Statement on Submission paper

• Health Information & Technology Management Plan, Submission of WHA, 2000

• Who's reading about me?, (article about various health databases, electronic records / systems, and the MOH's WAVE project), Penny St John, WHW Dec 2000

• Who's been looking at my file? Medical records and centralised databases (report on efforts by WHA to get public discussion on proposals to introduce electronic record sharing), Sandra Coney, WHW June 1998

• Privacy Commissioner scrutinises medical record databases (report on Privacy / Commissioner's report Medical record databases - just what you need?. This followed complaints from WHA and others regarding plans to introduce such systems), WHW June 1998

• Records to be kept for 10 years (report on new law on retention of health records), WHW March/April 1997

• Confidentiality of patient communications and records - What you must know, Warwick Gendall (report on paper to National Medico-Legal Conference, August 1992), WHW Oct/Nov 1992