A decade since it was first announced, the federal government has spent close to $2bn on its troubled My Health Record system, and half of the 23m records created lie empty almost a year after the government made the system opt-out. The former Labor government first proposed the e-health record system in 2009 as a means for patients, doctors and specialists to share patient history, X-rays, prescriptions and other medical information with ease. The system was first launched in 2012 with little fanfare and very little uptake. In 2016, it was reported that after four years, only around 4 million people had created a record, and even fewer had actually had any information put in it. The Coalition government then attempted to salvage the system by rebranding it to My Health Record and moving to make it opt-out in 2018, but the opt-out time period was extended to the […]