Digital health and privacy breaches
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What changes are being made to blood donor screening in New Zealand?
There are big changes coming to the way we screen potential blood donors. No longer will gay and bisexual men be subject to specific questions about their sexual activity.
Instead, everyone will be asked the same questions and those questions are incredibly personal.
What we're asking is, have you had any new sexual partners in the last three months? Or have you had multiple sexual partners? And if someone answers yes to those, then the next question is, have you had anal sex with those partners?
So from today, these questions will be put to both men and women, straight and gay. And it's hoped as a result, more people will be able to donate blood.
What personal information is collected from blood donors?
But what actually happens to this very personal information? Just how protected is it? Because remember this?
Did you know that the Manage My Health software in New Zealand has been hacked?
How secure is the Manage My Health software after the recent hack?
GPs say they want more communication about the investigation into a major health privacy breach. Private information doesn't get much more intimate than this. The health history of 126,000 New Zealanders ready to be displayed on the dark web. Deeply, deeply personal stuff in there that
a lot of people wouldn't want to get out. This is a developing story, but here's what we know so far about a major data breach at digital medication platform Medimap.
The hack saw some patients who were still alive declared dead. Others had their names changed to Charlie Kirk.
Hi, I'm Amanda Gillies, and today on The Detail, protecting our intimate medical information. The review into the Manage My Health breach has just wrapped up, and it coincides with all Kiwis being asked more personal questions when giving blood.
What are the implications of the data breach at Medimap?
Add to this, more and more doctors are using AI for note-taking during appointments. So, in 2026, is our personal medical information safe from hackers everywhere?
Short answer, very, very vulnerable, unfortunately. And it's not necessarily the fault of the health sector. It is just the way cybercrime is increasing year by year. With the introduction of artificial intelligence, all the geopolitical problems that we're seeing around the world, cybercrime is big business. In fact, if it was a country, it would actually be the third richest country in the world.
That's Jan Thornborough, a cyber security specialist and founder of Outfox Limited, which helps keep businesses cyber safe. Today I also talked to a colleague who had her medical information hacked a year after she survived a fatal car crash.
When you put so much trust in an organisation to take care of the most like sacred information that you have, which is your own personal information, You expect them to have these security measures in place. And now that this has happened and these random people somewhere in the world just have my data, I'm just like, how am I meant to trust my health providers? That is such a personal trust that you put in them.
More from Shalise Tansey in a moment. But first, back to Jan, who says hackers and scammers are still making a lot of money from stolen digital health records.
Oh, absolutely.
How vulnerable is personal medical information to cybercrime?
There's really two types of attackers. The main ones are state-sponsored, which are exactly what they sound like. They're government-sponsored attackers. And then you have the cyber criminals. And usually, but not always, the cyber criminals that do the ransomware attacks, such as the one we saw with Manage My Health, and the ones that are trying to extort money So, you know, they take your health records and then they might, they'll try and sell them on the dark web, but they also might use them to blackmail you or cause, you know, difficulties for you later on. And even try and send fake emails saying that you've got an appointment or something and getting you to click on a link so they can steal your credentials.
Wow. And is it health apps because that is something that is deeply personal to people? That is why it's so attractive to these hackers and scammers?
Oh, absolutely. I mean, at the end of the day, what they want to do is they want to make you scared. They want to put fear into you so that you'll do something urgently.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What changes are being made to blood donor screening in New Zealand?
0:04–0:49
2
What personal information is collected from blood donors?
0:49–1:05
3
How secure is the Manage My Health software after the recent hack?
1:05–1:58
4
What are the implications of the data breach at Medimap?
1:58–3:33
5
How vulnerable is personal medical information to cybercrime?
3:33–5:02
6
What security measures are health organizations implementing?
5:02–7:13
7
What role does AI play in healthcare data management?
7:13–9:49
8
How can individuals protect their health data from cyber threats?
9:49–22:31