Will technology save us from COVID 19?

Hear Data Protection and Surveillance stream lead David Vaile as he participates in two COVIDSafe app events.

‘COVIDSafe app and Telehealth’ - national forum for health consumers and intermediaries, Health Issues Centre (HIC) (motto: ‘Consumer voices for better health care’), 7 May 2020

This online forum involved almost 200 people from around Australia, including mostly health consumers and their representatives, medical practitioners and public health experts, and health and disability intermediaries, advisers and regulators. HIC CEO Danny Vadasz hosted David Vaile and Dr Chris Lease the Deputy Chief Public Health Officer for South Australia in discussing the mechanics of and considerations for effective contact tracing in a pandemic, and issues arising from enthusiastic but uncritical promotion of the COVIDSafe app and the role of informed consent for using such a digital tool in a public health setting. A second session addressed the rise and practicalities of telehealth in the Coronavirus context. The HIC will be summarising and reporting on the outcomes of the discussions, including multiple small group ‘breakout rooms’.  Meanwhile listen to David Vaile speak at the forum, from 26.30 minutes

‘Data Sovereignty: The Future and Implications’, with case study the hosting COVIDSafe app data in Australia on AWS, virtual round table hosted by Hurley Palmer Flatt, 6 May 2020

This roundtable brought together David Vaile and others including technologist Guy Danskine from Equinix, counsel for Macquarie Telecom Matthew O'Rourke and adviser Peter Gaston from Hurley Palmer Flatt to discuss the implications of ‘Data Sovereignty’ concerns for telecommunications, hosting and data centre providers in Australia. The significance of jurisdiction over the foreign parent of locally based subsidiaries such as AWS hosting the COVIDSafe app data in Australia was a focus of part of the discussion. A record of the event will soon be made available online.