IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

The Internet has made the sharing of information commonplace and most people are comfortable with having some personal material on the Net.

That is evident when you consider the staggering amount of personal detail that half a billion people have divulged on Facebook. Also the federal government now routinely allows you to store and access some very private information online, such as your income tax return. However, the most ambitious plan of all is to have the medical history or every Canadian accessible online. It is a concept filled with great hope marred by some notable failures, and it relies on everyone's trust in the system.

Weiterlesen: CA: Don't trust the Net? Create your own eHealth record

In Ontario, eHealth can be a dirty word with massive overspending and contract scandals behind the soiled reputation.

However, if the cost issues are set aside for a moment, eHealth is making some strides in improving health care. One example is a medical record-sharing system being implemented throughout the South West Local Health Improvement Network.

SPIRE -- for Southwest Physician Interface to Regional Electronic Medical Record -- sends digital files of hospital-generated lab results, diagnostic images and transcribed reports directly to a patient's family doctor to be entered automatically in patients' files.

Weiterlesen: CA: Ontario: Record-sharing program bright spot for eHealth

The travails of electronic-health-record projects suffered in the past few years by the federal government and the governments of Ontario and British Columbia are quite consistent with an international pattern of exaggerated expectations and huge budgets. Long-term progress on eHealth is more likely to be achieved by moderate measures that build on proven success. A study published last week in the journal PLoS Medicine, which studied dozens of other studies around the world, concluded that, as yet, the evidence of real benefits from digitalization of health care is slim, though the theoretical potential remains great.

The 10 British researchers found very little proof of better results for patients’ health or cost-effectiveness for health-care institutions. Such disappointing data appeared in all of the three areas considered: patient records, electronic prescribing and facilitating health care from a distance.

Weiterlesen: CA: Big spending is not the road to eHealth

New face-scanning technology will be installed this spring at Mohawk Racetrack and Grand River Raceway to detect patrons who have registered with the provincial lottery and gaming authority as being problem gamblers.

The equipment is expected to help identify when one of the estimated 15,000 people who have voluntarily excluded themselves from Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation sites enters an OLG gaming site, an OLG representative said.

The new system “couldn’t come soon enough,” said Michelle Nogueira, an addictions counsellor at Homewood Health Centre.

Weiterlesen: CA: Ontario: Face scanners to spot problem gamblers coming to Grand River, Mohawk raceways