IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

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.

The first phase of the portal is expected to go live in late 2009. Once fully implemented, residents and businesses will see a dramatic improvement in online service capabilities.

After being turned down last year for help through “Rural Connections”, an Ontario program set up to help local communities get the benefit of Internet services, county officials are set to try again, and are more optimistic of success this time around.

Eager to counter two years of bad publicity over a multimillion-dollar spending scandal, Ontario's health minister boasted Tuesday that the province's overhauled electronic-health records program had managed to get five million patients on to digital medical charts.

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.

"Electronic medical health records are extremely important for not only improving the speed of care, but also the accuracy of care," said Ivan Langrish, the health minister's press secretary. "To have all of your medical records in place (means doctors) don't have to sift through a paper chart. Everything is all directly online."

The ruling means the country’s largest telephone companies must allocate $733 million out of special ‘deferral accounts’ towards customer rebates and rural broadband. This includes $310 million rebated to urban home telephone customers, and $422 million to deploy broadband Internet service to 287 rural and remote communities.

When the first patients walk through the doors of William Osler Health Centre's new Brampton Civic Hospital in a couple of weeks, they will be entering a hospital like no other in Canada - but one that will increasingly become the standard for health-care delivery across the country.

From check-in and lab tests to bedside care and drug dispensing, the $550-million hospital northwest of Toronto is a model of electronic health - or e-health, as it's been dubbed.

EHealth Ontario announced this week that the last of the 26 hospitals in the Erie St. Clair and South West Local Health Integration Networks have been connected to access a central repository of digital images and test results.

"The new system eliminates film for use in X-rays, CT scans, MRIs and allows files to be stored in a central repository where can be instantly available to a doctor anywhere in the region," said Greg Reed, president and CEO of eHealth Ontario.

An Ontario Auditor’s report recently exposed a new version of the eHealth scandal when it was revealed that taxpayers’ money was still being funnelled to Liberal-friendly consultants long after Premier Dalton McGuinty promised to kill such payments in the aftermath of the original scandal.

In the first version, about $1 billion was spent on consultants to produce a digital health care information system, but nothing of substance was actually produced.

It's gone from two nurses on 'phone duty' to seven nurses answering about 125 calls a day.

The Durham Health Connection Line helps residents find services and provides health education advice.

Rita Lajoie, a public health nurse with Durham Region, says the type of calls include such topics as parenting, travel health and immunization, prenatal inquiries, how to quit smoking, breastfeeding help and post-partum depression.

Although out-of-hospital records such as private lab test results and prescriptions are unavailable, Hamilton Health Sciences (HHS) wants people to know an electronic patient information system is closer than most would think.

It is still in a rollout phase, but “we have 3,000 physicians and clinicians (out of 15,000) enrolled and we continue to add hospitals onto the system,” said Mark Farrow, HHS assistant vice-president of information and technologies. The Hamilton Niagara Haldimand Brant LHIN e-health version, spearheaded by HHS, will also tap into the Wellington Waterloo LHIN’s hospitals.

The "eHealth Ontario" initiative will also connect doctors, patients and pharmacists electronically to better manage the flow, safety and effectiveness of prescription drugs and cut wait times at Ontario hospitals, the head of the group developing the program says.

More residents and businesses in rural southern Ontario will soon be in the fast lane with access to high-speed Internet services in their communities, announced Chatham-Kent-Essex MPP Pat Hoy.

“In today’s economy, high-speed is essential for success and growth. This program is an investment in the future prosperity of Rural Ontario and the McGuinty government is eager to help make that prosperity a reality,” said Hoy.