I sought clarification from Medicare Australia in relation to the following email that was posted on the GPCG_Talk list last week. The Alliance has received written confirmation from Medicare Australia that "Medicare Australia has no intention of withdrawing support for PKI".
"Since the moving of Medicare Australia away from the health portfolio into the Human Services portfolio, we have been told that support for development, deployment and technical support for use of PKI in the health sector has been dropped for any applications other than those that support Medicare-related business. I am told that Medicare Australia no longer will invest resources in supporting the use of their PKI infrastructure for strictly healthcare-related applications. Medicare will simply concentrate on use of PKI for Medicare 'core business'; which is interpreted to mean insurance-related applications. This leaves initiatives that have adopted HeSA PKI for security in clinical areas out in the cold and largely unsupported both technically and strategically. HeSA, the organisation that established an infrastructure for deploying PKI certificates, certificate tokens and also negotiated and oversaw the Certification Authorities and registration process, has been absorbed back into Medicare Australia and told to focus on 'core business'. There are quite a number of initiatives around Australia that have adopted HeSA's PKI technology in healthcare environments on the understanding that this would be the anointed mechanism for encrypting health data and for applying digital signing. They now find that unless the application is related to Medicare claiming, their initiatives are receiving minimal support, they cant get answers to important and urgent technical matters, and they cant be assured that the infrastructure will continue to be provided." Kind Regards Alberto Tinazzi eHealth Support Program Officer Alliance of NSW Divisions GPO Box 5433 SYDNEY NSW 2001 Level 13 9 Castlereagh Street SYDNEY NSW 2000 Tel: 02 9239 2900 Fax: 02 9239 2999 mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] <BLOCKED::mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://www.answd.com.au/ <http://www.answd.com.au/> http://www.bbfh.com.au <http://www.bbfh.com.au> For information on the Broadband for Health initiative please visit http://www.bbfh.com.au <http://www.bbfh.com.au> Alliance of NSW Divisions 9th Annual Vital Links State Forum - Get Connected 18-19 May 2007, The Dome, Olympic Park, Sydney Proudly presented in collaboration with the 2007 Sydney General Practitioners Conference and Exhibition (GPCE) PLEASE NOTE: The information contained in this e-mail is confidential. It is intended solely for the addressee. If you receive this e-mail by mistake please notify us. You must not disclose or use the information in it unless we authorise you to do so. This note also confirms that this e-mail message has been virus scanned and although no computer viruses were detected, the Alliance of NSW Divisions accepts no liability for any consequential damage resulting from e-mail containing any computer viruses.
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