by medicaltechont | Oct 8, 2013 | e-Health, eHealth
After more than a decade of hard work and collaboration, digital health is making treatment safer, more efficient, and, ultimately, better for Canadians.
Consider the following:
Use of electronic medical records (EMR) in community-based practices in Canada has yielded efficiency and patient care benefits valued at $1.3-billion since 2006.
Drug information systems reduce prescription errors and result in fewer adverse drug events with annual estimated benefits of $475-million.
Tele-health saved patients over 47 million kilometres in travel and $70-million in personal travel costs in 2010 alone.
Through investment with our jurisdictional partners, Canada Health Infoway has already established the foundational requirements for securely capturing, storing, sharing, accessing and managing health information. And while every province and territory is at a different stage of development, they are all working on these foundational elements according to their local priorities and needs.
Canadian consumers are comfortable with digital tools and are global leaders in the adoption and use of information technologies such as social media, online shopping and digital banking. Coupled with a growing desire to manage our wellness and to take on more active roles in the management of our chronic diseases, we find ourselves at a pivotal moment in our digital health journey.
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by medicaltechont | Apr 27, 2012 | eHealth, Ontario
A Toronto conference on health informatics hears experts tout the use of information technology to improve patient outcomes
Enterprises aren’t the only organizations that suffer from silos of data. So does the medical community, a Toronto health informatics conference has been told.
Dr. Bruce Friedman, professor emeritus of pathology at the University of Michigan medical school, said that for too long pathologists– who look at patient tissues through microscopes, and radiologists – who look at x-rays – have operated as separate, sometimes undigitized disciplines.
Their reports go separately to clinicians, who have to make a diagnosis.
But, Friedman said, it’s time, to bring the disciplines together through information technology to create a single “super diagnosis” to make it easier for doctors.
His speech on Thursday at the opening of the two-day Advances in Health Informatics Conference was one of a number of presentations by doctors and researchers on how IT can improve patient outcomes.
The conference led off with former Canadian astronaut Dr. Dave Williams, now chief executive officer and assistant professor of surgery at Ontario’s Southlake Regional Health Centre, saying health informatics “is truly the disruptive, revolutionary change that will change the way we deliver health care.”
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by medicaltechont | Mar 31, 2010 | Uncategorized
The Liberal government has quietly scrapped a mandatory review of a new health bureaucracy.
Premier Dalton McGuinty says the legislative review, which was to have taken place by the end of March, was dropped because Ontario’s 14 Local Health Integration Networks (or LHINs) are not yet fully operational. The LHINs took effect on April 1, 2007.
“As it turns out, all of the responsibilities that we wanted the LHINs to take on, they have yet to take on,” he told the legislature.
“In particular, a big part of their new responsibilities would be long-term care (and they) have not yet done that.”
Progressive Conservative leader Tim Hudak said the review was much needed in light of a recent spending scandal at eHealth Ontario. Millions in untendered contracts were handed out at that agency, which was criticized as the worst-managed agency Auditor General Jim McCarter had ever seen.
Hudak contends health bureaucrats at various LHINs have handed out at least $7 million in untendered contracts. “I suspect Dalton McGuinty’s motivation is clear,” he said. “He does not want to have any more scrutiny of the growing rot at his LHINs, which resembles very much the kind of scandalous spending we saw at eHealth.”
The province designed LHINs to enable better local health planning and more local freedom in distributing health dollars to the neediest recipients. Ottawa is part of the Champlain LHIN, which co-ordinates and funds hospitals, community care access centres, addictions and mental health agencies, community support services, community health centres and long-term care homes across eastern Ontario. It is headed by Dr. Robert Cushman.
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by medicaltechont | Feb 16, 2010 | Ontario, Software
The federal government’s failure to release $500 million in promised funding has slowed the next phase of the multibillion-dollar national effort to implement electronic health records (EHRs), says Canada Health Infoway President Richard Alvarez.
The year-long freeze on federal funding has compromised plans to rollout initiatives designed to improve physician uptake of electronic records, Alvarez says. This will do nothing to improve Canada’s status as an international EHR laggard, Alvarez says.
“The next very serious phase is basically in community physicians’ offices,” says Alvarez, head of the federal agency created in 2001 to promote provincial and territorial EHR programs. “The vast majority of the [new] money was earmarked for that. That’s an absolutely crucial step in this journey. We’ve been slowed down. If we don’t have money to invest in that area we obviously can’t do that until such time as the money is reinstated.”
The $500 million was promised in the 2009 federal budget, raising the government’s overall electronic health records investment to $2.1 billion. Since 2001, Ottawa has now paid $1.6-billion for an array of programs in which federal funds have been matched by provincial and territorial monies to build nationally compatible systems and platforms. Alvarez estimates that about $3 billion has been invested to date by various levels of government in the development of EHRs in Canada.
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by medicaltechont | Apr 7, 2008 | Uncategorized
Engineering techniques can be used to eliminate inefficiencies in Canada’s health care system, as the work by a new Toronto research centre shows. In the modern race to innovate, the health care industry is lagging decades behind manufacturing and other service industries. Michael Carter is ready to launch a game of catch-up.
As head of the new Centre for Research in Healthcare Engineering at the University of Toronto, Dr. Carter’s job seems simple on paper, but a lot tougher to execute: Replace the isolated elements of the system with a more efficient, productive health care system that gets everyone pulling in the same direction and makes the best use of limited resources.
“Every time I go into a hospital, I’m looking at it with a different eye,” Dr. Carter says. “Everywhere I look I see opportunities for improving efficiency. … It’s not just cutting costs. It’s really important to have the system set up properly.”
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