The Health Informatics Society of Australia (HISA) would like to invite you to the inaugural national conference, Health Privacy Futures - HPF'08. Health privacy is a key foundation of Australia's transition to a safer and more efficient health system. This conference looks to bring together healthcare providers, consumers and Australia's leading privacy experts, to bring clarity and definition to this critical issue.

The  conference will not only educate health practitioners, managers and policy makers, but it will also contribute to setting the national framework for the future of health privacy.

We believe the timing is excellent as the submission by the Australian Law Reform Commission on the proposed Privacy Law changes has now been tabled in Parliament. In August 2008, Senator John Faulkner has stated that legislation for the first stages of the Privacy law reform will be 12-18 months.  Senator Faulkner said that Health will be considered as part of the first stage "as these issues interact directly with the recommendations on the UPPs (the proposed Unified Privacy Principals) as well as having been identified as priority issues by stakeholders and agencies." Furthermore, he stated that: "Dealing with them at an early stage is also consistent with COAG's current agenda on health and consumer credit reform."

Much of the Health related aspects in the Privacy law review depend on the creation of "Privacy (Health Information) Regulations" by the Privacy Commissioner. This conference will ensure practitioners and consumer groups have an opportunity to both understand the national perspective and to help contribute to the new regulations and hence ensure protection to individual's privacy while maintaining effective health knowledge exchange.

The Health Privacy Futures (HPF'08) event will be held at the Royal on the Park, Brisbane 10th and 11th November 2008. This event has an outstanding line up of Australia's leading health privacy experts with detailed with detailed knowledge of our health and privacy environments.  Speakers will be complimented with practical 'how-to' workshops at both the beginner and more advanced levels.

The program is designed to attract a broad target audience consisting of practitioners, consumers, industry, academics, government and legal people. The event will include an exhibition to provide a showcase for innovative Australian privacy services and systems providers.  These are the companies that will be providing the support and solutions for our new health privacy structures.

We look forward to you attending.