Breaches and incidents
NT Health (Royal Darwin Hospital, Australia): pregnant patients’ details posted to Instagram by a medical observer
Per ABC, confidential information about pregnant women, including names, ID numbers and medical conditions, was posted to an Instagram account with about...
- Disclosed
- Verification
- Reported by a reputable outlet, citing the company
What happened
- Per ABC, confidential information about pregnant women, including names, ID numbers and medical conditions, was posted to an Instagram account with about 28,000 followers by a “medical observer” who was at RDH from 12 to 14 Oct. Health Minister Steve Edgington said on Monday 26 Oct that all five affected patients had been contacted; on 27 Oct NT Health raised the count to 12.
- Root cause: an observer with ward access posted images of patient information; the observer said she “cannot confirm how these images were posted.”
- No external attacker; NT Health attributes the posts to the observer.
- The content was removed, the breach was referred to the NT Information Commissioner and NT Police, and the observer program was paused. ABC reports a disputed timeline: NT Health says it learned on 14 Oct, a hospital letter says 15 Oct, and ABC saw an email to NT Health’s legal team on 13 Oct.