In a statement, Brown said patient data is incredibly personal and whether it is held by a public agency or a private company, it must be protected to the highest of standards.
"I have decided to commission the Ministry of Health to lead a review of the ManageMyHealth and Health New Zealand's response."
The minister has written to the Director-General of Health asking that the review will commence by the end of the month.
'Big wakeup call'
Brown earlier said the cyber breach of the country's largest patient information portal was a "big wakeup call", telling RNZ he was incredibly concerned.
"It's a deeply serious situation," he said.
"I've been briefed a number of times by health officials who are working very closely with ManageMyHealth in regard to the notification process."
He said ManageMyHealth was also working with the Privacy Commissioner and the National Cyber Security Centre, who were providing them with advice around the notification process.
Brown said his expectation was that they do it as quickly as possible, but they also had to do it accurately as well, and in compliance with the Privacy Act.
"There's a number of processes they have to go through. My expectation is that they do that as quickly as possible so that patients who have had data breached are aware of that and of what data has been breached," he said.
Brown said the advice he's received was that the cyber hackers had only released a very small portion of data as part of their attempt in order to receive a ransom payment.
There was a forensic process underway at the moment to go through and identify who's been impacted and then the process of notification, which is what Manage My Health was doing, he said.
Brown said the group were using hacked information in order to receive a financial reward, but they did not know where they were operating from.
"The reality is that here is a big wakeup call in terms of the protection of private health data and their need for that to be held in the most secure form possible so that patients can have confidence in how it is being used," he said.
