Updated August 04, 2018 15:01:45

Photo: SA Health says there is no evidence the data was used inappropriately.

SA Health has revealed that thousands of children's medical test results have been publicly available online for the past 13 years.

The data with the names, date of birth and test results for about 7,200 pathology tests was embedded in a document on the Women's and Children's Hospital website from 2005.

It was removed in 2016, but two other document-storing websites kept it available until Thursday, when the department's IT security teams asked them to remove the data.

Cached versions of those documents were online until yesterday.

The test results related to patients who were treated at the hospital for respiratory infection, gastro or whooping cough between 1996 and 2005, Women's and Children's executive director of corporate services Phil Robinson said.

The patient information was included in an academic presentation on childhood infections that was posted to the hospital's website in 2005.

A father of a child treated at the hospital discovered the data breach when he used Google to search for his child's name.

"Our IT security team advise that the risk of anyone discovering the embedded information within the presentation is extremely low," Mr Robinson said.

"Once we were alerted to the error late Wednesday afternoon, we identified the nature of the information and contacted the website administrators who removed the presentation containing the data by Thursday afternoon.

"However, because the data was stored in a cache, it wasn't completely removed from the internet until late last night.

"We have no evidence to suggest that any of the information has been used inappropriately.

"I would like to apologise to those affected by this data error."

The Women's and Children's Hospital was made aware of the mistake following a consumer complaint to the Health and Community Services Complaints Commissioner's office.

SA Health will review all PowerPoint presentations in the public domain to ensure there was no patient data inadvertently embedded, it said in a statement.

Opposition health spokesman Chris Picton said it was important SA Health checked there were no other similar issues across other hospitals.

Anyone with concerns should contact the Women's and Children's information line on (08) 8155 5654.

Topics: infant-health, health, healthcare-facilities, information-technology, adelaide-5000, sa

First posted August 04, 2018 12:36:00