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Ambulance Tasmania is committed to the privacy and confidentiality of its patients and is continuing to work on improving its systems to ensure that information about people who need our services is protected.
Like other emergency services around Australia, Ambulance Tasmania uses a paging network to communicate with paramedics. This is used to alert crews to incidents, as well as provide information to our staff that is critical for both their safety and the safety of patients.
Unfortunately, as has occurred with other services around the country, Ambulance Tasmania has been subject to some of this data being accessed and published without authorisation. With the involvement of Tasmania Police, the site was shut down early last month.
As a result of this unauthorised action, Ambulance Tasmania has moved immediately to ensure the risk of patient data being misused is minimised.
Changes have been made to the way Ambulance Tasmania’s staff input and manage patient information to ensure additional triage and protection of data and that only essential information is transmitted.
Ambulance Tasmania is also part of an emergency services’ steering committee examining options to further protect data through technology solutions.
This is a complex and technologically challenging issue, which is being faced by a number of jurisdictions, and therefore this work will take some time.
In the meantime, any patient of Ambulance Tasmania who has concerns regarding this issue is encouraged to email Ambulance Tasmania via [email protected]
Anyone needing emergency medical care should continue to call 000. Ambulance Tasmania’s priority is to save lives, and ensure the highest levels of safety and protection for our staff and patients.
5 February 2021