Dr Haikerwal, a clinical lead with the National E-health Transition Authority (NEHTA), said good clinical care depended on the absolute confidence that the privacy of each consultation is maintained.

 

“This confidentiality is equally important to both health professionals and the people they look after and without this the system will not fly,’’ he said.

 

“Patient confidentiality is vitally important to us in our work and the good thing about the healthcare identifier is that it not only makes the system safer, more accurate and up-to-date, but it also carries with it additional safeguards over and above what exists today.”

 

Dr Haikerwal, a medical practitioner and former federal president of the Australian Medical Association, said one feature of the proposed new system was that health professionals will have to be authenticated prior to accessing the system.

 

“There is also a very strict audit trail so that any individual can know that someone has accessed their record in the system which is an additional layer of security,” Dr Haikerwal said.

 

He also said that the identifiers are an essential element of any future electronic health record system, which will be patient controlled and not held on a centralised database.

 

Furthermore, the personal information associated with the identifier will be restricted to name, birth information, sex and address.

 

Dr Haikerwal said that he had personally been involved in consultations with a wide range of groups including privacy advocates over the past six months.

 

"If confidentiality of the doctor-patient relationship is in anyway compromised I would have no part in it," Dr Haikerwal said.