Apostrophe’s cause problem’s in e-health system’s

Record stupidity in Australian PCEHR rollout

By Richard Chirgwin, 4th July 2012

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Australia’s bug-ridden PCEHR – personally-controlled electronic health record – has run into another first glitch, with its registration site reportedly rejecting names containing non-alphanumeric characters.

If you’re an O’Dwyer or have a double-barrelled surname, the registration process for PCEHRs would have failed, according to a story published in Medical Observer (not linked because it’s a registration-only site).

MO claimed that both online and telephone registrations failed if the registrant needed non-alpha characters. The system was quickly taken offline by the Health Department, with a relaunch date not yet nailed down.

The Australian, which has followed the rollout with a close and critical eye, reported this week that the system was compromised last year during test deployments, because Accenture had failed to implement proper firewall policy. The contractor has been given until August to complete its delivery of “some elements” of the system.

The troubled e-health system is running behind schedule, and earlier this year, trials were stalled to deal with software compatibility issues. ®

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