Site Changes

On 1 November 2010 the Office of the Privacy Commissioner was integrated into the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner and a new website established at www.oaic.gov.au.

Note 1: Major changes to the Privacy Act 1988 will come into effect in March 2014. Agencies, businesses and not for profits need to start preparing for these changes. For more information go to our privacy law reform page at www.oaic.gov.au
Note 2: From 12 March 2013 content is no longer being added to, or amended, on this site, consequently some information may be out of date. For new privacy content visit the www.oaic.gov.au website.

How will my IHI be used in my eHealth record?

Your IHI can be used to identify you when someone is seeking to access your personally controlled electronic health record (eHealth record). This is why it is important that your IHI is kept secure. Under the Healthcare Identifiers Act other people must keep your IHI secure and can only collect, use and disclose it for limited purposes. For example, healthcare providers can collect, use and disclose your IHI to provide you with healthcare.

Your healthcare providers will be able to request your IHI from the Healthcare Identifiers Service without your consent (see question 10) if they have enough information to identify you. If you don’t want them to use your IHI to access your eHealth record, you can set up an access code to restrict who can access your eHealth record. Then the record can only be accessed by entering the code, except in an emergency.

Your IHI will be used to help ensure that the right clinical documents are associated with your eHealth record. It will also be used to draw clinical documents that are linked to your IHI from registered data repositories and attach them to your eHealth record.