Episode 74 - Data Privacy and Anonymisation with Professor D’Arcy Holman

Data privacy has been in the news recently due to a recent large-scale customer data leak involving Optus in Australia. Another key area where data privacy applies is the area of population level health data, with these data often being used in research to investigate issues such as health problems and potential ways to prevent and treat them. Our guest in this episode is Emeritus Professor D’Arcy Holman, an accomplished and much awarded epidemiologist and law scholar who has worked across the academic and public sectors during his career. During his time in the public sector, D’Arcy was one of the architects of Western Australia’s Data Linkage System that launched in the mid 90’s, he was then the foundation Head of School for what is now the UWA School of Population and Global Health, and also served as the first Chair in Public Health at the School. D’Arcy’s interest in law came later in his career, when he completed a law degree, with the key focus of his legal research being the legal framework that regulates and permits individuals’ health records to be accessed for the purposes of health research. A key element of this being made possible is the anonymisation of these health records. D’Arcy outlines for us the legislation and common law that are relevant to this area of data privacy, as well as what needs to be done in order for anonymisation of data to be legally effective. He also discusses the Commonwealth Data Availability and Transparency Act which came into effect in 2022. You can read more about D’Arcy here: https://www.uwa.edu.au/Profile/DArcy-Holman D’Arcy has also published a book about his initial findings on data privacy and anonymisation in 2012, you can read more about this here: https://www.cherel.org.au/news/new-book-available/i As always, if you want to get in touch with the podcast, you can contact us at: meaningofhealth@outlook.com or via twitter @healthmeanswhat or via FaceBook @MeaningofHealth