IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

The communities' applications were accepted this year under the provincial Rural Connections Broadband Program, which backs broadband access for rural and remote areas of southern Ontario now considered "under-serviced."

The study concludes that many government organizations are being forced to find innovative ways to deliver more services for less money - and one of the best ways to do that is to reduce the amount of duplication that has tradtionally existed in service delivery.

The report by former auditor general Denis Desautels suggests the province limit start-ups of electronic services projects and "significantly" improve the way it manages their development in order to save taxpayers money.

The OTN is a provincewide, two-way video conferencing network that provides patients with access to clinical services at health care locations across the province. In addition to clinical care, the network is also an important avenue for delivering distance education and enabling meetings between health care professionals and other partners.

The “ePrescribing” initiative will involve two family physician practices and pharmacies in Sault Ste. Marie and the Collingwood area.

The physicians will send prescriptions electronically to the pharmacy of the patient’s choice.

"We're the largest province, surely we should be able to figure this out and come up with an action plan,'' Ann Cavoukian said in an interview with The Canadian Press.

It has been just over one year since Auditor General Jim McCarter issued a scathing report on how the province’s electronic health records attempt had loosely spent nearly $1 billion of taxpayer’s funds with little to show for it.

Political critics say Ontario is still “light years” behind the rest of the country when it comes to digitizing patient information.

Ontario's auditor is probing spending at the delay-plagued provincial agency responsible for developing electronic health records.

eHealth Ontario has spent $146 million on consultants since 2003, despite commitments to reign in billings for outside expertise.

And overall agency spending has ballooned to $839 million while the delivery date for province-wide, electronic patient health records has been pushed back to 2015.

The Town of Bancroft has received a major financial hand from the provincial government in the push to make the communication lines that much faster in the area. Under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs’ Rural Connections program, the Town of Bancroft will receive a grant of $152,967 that will go towards the expansion of broadband Internet throughout the greater Bancroft area.

Conservative Public Safety Minister Vic Toews on Friday announced that Galaxy Broadband Communications, Spectrum Telecom Group Ltd./Blue Sky Economic Growth Corp and TBayTel/Northwestern Ontario Innovation Centre have been conditionally approved for funding through the federal government’s Broadband Canada: Connecting Rural Canadians program.

Federal, provincial and municipal politicians gathered at the Trillium Wood Golf Club in Thurlow Tuesday to celebrate the construction of the largest rural broadband network in Ontario. The high-speed Internet infrastructure project will connect with local delivery systems to expand services to an estimated one million residents and businesses.

Tuesday's announcement marked the culmination of five years of discussion, meetings and planning, something noted by federal minister Chuck Strahl.

City Council today made a bold move in support of opening City data not protected by privacy laws to the public to encourage innovative new uses.

“I am proud that Ottawa has embraced the rapidly growing open data movement,” said Mayor Larry O’Brien. “Open data will give free access to machine-readable information that will leverage the City’s data to improve community experience and stimulate economic growth.”

Deep River's system went live on Tuesday.

The repository is known as the Northern and Eastern Ontario Diagnostic Imaging Network (NEODIN). It is one of four being developed in the province to hold electronic copies of medical images and associated diagnostic reports. Once the northern and eastern repository and network is complete, it will allow the electronic transfer of images and reports between more than 60 diagnostic imaging departments in northern and eastern Ontario.

The head of eHealth Ontario says the agency has emerged from a spending scandal and will deliver electronic health records for all patients within five years.

Greg Reed, in an exclusive interview with the Star, said after six months on the job he’s confident his revamped team can deliver.

Critics say Ontario, the federal government and other provinces, however, are still squandering billions by relying on expensive commercial software to implement electronic health records, rather than free, open-source programs that are proving effective and much less costly.

Four of Ontario’s fourteen LHINs (Local Health Integration Network) are working together with Ontario’s Community Care Information Management (CCIM) leads to establish a portal for service providers to securely share and access accurate health information electronically.

The project entitled, “Doorways - Strengthening connections between providers and clients” is being piloted for mental health consumers and health care providers.

If the Ontario government wants to get the biggest bang for its medical buck, it should invest in e-Health, says the head of the association representing Ontario's 156 public hospitals. Funding electronic medical health records is an investment that would bring the best yield over time, said Hilary Short.

The Georgian Bay Family Health Team has received provincial funding to work with local area retail pharmacies to try out electronic prescriptions.

"This initiative is testing the viability of allowing prescriptions to be sent over encrypted internet lines from GBFHT Physicians' offices directly to participating area pharmacies," spokesperson Marie Larose said.

But that’s no longer the case in the Orangeville area, where all but one member of the 25- member Dufferin Area Family Health Team has electronic records.

Typically, paper records, outlining your health history, will stay in a file folder at your doctor’s office, where they are inaccessible to any other medical professional who might be in need of the information contained in your file.