Health Minister Nicola Roxon announced Wednesday nine new sites where the government will ask patients to sign up for its e-health records program. Of 90 applicants for the second wave of sites--which includes grant funding of $55 million--Brisbane has been pinpointed as the premier testing site, reports Courier Mail. The goal for the first 12 sites is to have 500,000 patients signed up for the personally controlled electronic health record system prior to its launch next year, when more initiatives will be rolled out. Meanwhile, privacy concerns remain, as a draft concept of the program and its governance has not been released and no privacy experts were consulted. The government has stressed that the "proposed measures are safeguarded."
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