A darknet trader is illegally selling the Medicare patient details of any Australian on request by “exploiting a vulnerability” in a government system, raising concerns that a health agency may be seriously compromised. An investigation by Guardian Australia can reveal that a darknet vendor on a popular auction site for illegal products claims to have access to any Australian’s Medicare card details and can supply them on request...

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After I’d completed my usual 5-kilometre near my London flat, a stranger I didn’t know “liked” my workout—even though I had enabled stricter privacy settings, which I thought would shield my workouts from public view. This happened several more times while I jogged the same route, and then again when I was on vacation in Barcelona. Alarmed at the idea of that strangers could see the routes I run on two or three times a week, I embarked on an investigation into the privacy settings of Strava...

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My Health Record, the Australian government's e-health record system, has been officially given the green light from the Council of Australian Governments Health Council to automatically sign citizens up to the service, allowing them to opt-out if they choose. By 2018, all Australians will have a My Health Record and by 2022, all healthcare providers will be able to contribute to and use health information in My Health Record on behalf of their patients. They will also be able to communicate with other healthcare providers on the clinical status of joint patients via the digital platform...

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With news this week that White House officials were fooled by a self-proclaimed “email prankster”—who posed as Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s advisor and son-in-law, and recently ousted Chief of Staff, Reince Priebus, during correspondences with various cabinet members—it’s worth remembering that there are cybersecurity implications for healthcare institutions as well...

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In March 2016, DeepMind’s AlphaGo beat Lee Sedol, who at the time was the best human Go player in the world. It represented one of those defining technological moments like IBM’s Deep Blue beating chess champion Garry Kasparov, or even IBM Watson beating the world’s greatest Jeopardy! champions in 2011. Yet these victories, as mind-blowing as they seemed to be, were more about training algorithms and using brute-force computational strength than any real intelligence...

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The death rate from bacterial infections plummeted following the discovery of penicillin. However, these microbes developed ways to resist our antibiotics. What threats do superbugs pose and what factors contribute to their emergence? The discovery and development of antibiotics saved millions of lives during the latter half of the 20th century. Scottish bacteriologist Alexander Fleming, who witnessed soldiers with infected wounds perish while serving in the Royal Army Medical Corps during the First World War, per chance discovered a penicillin producing mold in 1928...

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The superbug crisis is killing more patients than breast cancer as the Government is relying on flawed figures which mask the true scale of the problem, health experts have warned. The Department of Health estimates that 5,000 people die each year due to drug resistance, but Dr Ron Daniels, chief executive of the UK Sepsis Trust, claims the true figure is around 12,000. The number of deaths is rising each year as more bugs that lead to blood poisoning are becoming resistant to antibiotics...

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Early last year, executives at a small hospital an hour north of Spokane, Wash., started using a company called EmCare to staff and run their emergency room. The hospital had been struggling to find doctors to work in its E.R., and turning to EmCare was something hundreds of other hospitals across the country had done. That's when the trouble began. Before EmCare, about 6 percent of patient visits in the hospital's emergency room were billed for the most complex, expensive level of care. After EmCare arrived, nearly 28 percent for the highest-level billing code...

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Yet another outbreak of foodborne illness last week at Chipotle Mexican Grill did what it usually does to the burrito chain: The stock price plummeted. It's bad news—particularly for the patrons who got sick—but it's a boon for anyone that had the foresight to short the stock. The latest outbreak was first noted by iwaspoisoned.com, a website that crowdsources reports of customer illnesses following visits to restaurants...

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Amazon is quietly building up its digital health tech talent, reportedly poaching a healthcare exec from Box. The Seattle behemoth may be best known for its retail business, but in the background it has a growing footprint in all manner of health technology areas. This latest Amazon talent grab appears to be another move to shore up those...

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