IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

Canada's health-care system needs to embrace the idea that people can get personal health information from Facebook, text messages and Wikipedia-like sites, so they won't block up hospital ERs and doctors' offices with their questions, says a Toronto doctor and information technologies expert.

The health system today is unsustainable, and will get worse as a wave of aging baby boomers, burned-out caregivers and obese children start knocking on hospital doors, says Dr. Alejandro Jadad, founder of the Centre for Global eHealth Innovation, who is speaking Thursday night at a public lecture in Edmonton.

No, I'm serious!

Like so many British Columbians I have this love/hate relationship with government, did I say love? No, that is not right, let's make that tolerate/hate relationship. Of all the things our government does, the thing I tolerate the most is the direction our government is taking in online services and e-government.

The government is like any other organization, it needs to embrace technological change and use it to be more competitive, or efficient.

The government agency that oversees the province's electronic health infrastructure, and increasingly the collection and sharing of sensitive patient information, would be unprepared if hit with a major security breach, the province's privacy watchdog has warned.

Smart Systems for Health Agency, or SSHA, says it has never experienced such a breach, but a comprehensive review of its privacy practices by Ontario's Information and Privacy Commissioner found there were "serious gaps" in the organization's ability to monitor electronic security lapses.

Ontario's budget, unveiled Tuesday, parcels new spending to the IT industry in the form of provisions for e-health, and spending on skills training.

The report by former auditor general Denis Desautels says the province should limit start-ups of electronic services such as on-line fishing licences.

Ontario spends more than $925-million a year to maintain and enhance the government services it offers electronically.

The report of a special task force on large-scale government information and information technology (I&IT) projects will help ensure future government I&IT initiatives are managed more effectively and efficiently, said Government Services Minister Gerry Phillips after receiving the report today.

"I would like to thank the task force members for the considerable amount of time and energy they put into this initiative," said Phillips. "We very much agree with the overall thrust of the report, and we think it provides an important blueprint for action."

eHealth Ontario will bring together the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care's eHealth program and the province's Smart Systems for Health Agency (SSHA) under one banner.

Three key eHealth priorities have been identified for the next few years including a Diabetes Registry, an eHealth Portal to centralize health information on an easily accessible web site, and ePrescribing which will eliminate hand written prescriptions and reduce medication errors.

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.