Since 2008, the territory's Health Department has been working on moving health centres and hospitals across the territory away from paper medical records and into an electronic system.
Early parts of the system are expected to roll out in the new year. But it will take five to 10 years before Nunavut's health records are completely digital, officials say.
The move to electronic records will save doctors, nurses and other health-care professionals a lot of time, said Martin Joy, Nunavut's director of health information.
"When you have somebody spending 15 or 20 hours a week chasing paper records, if all of a sudden that administrative hurdle is gone, now we have 20 extra hours to actually provide more care to patients," Joy said.
Cut information wait times
Most patient information in Nunavut is presently transmitted by fax or read over the phone. In some cases, medical documents travel with patients who must go outside the territory for treatment.
The current methods mean it can take days or weeks for medical information to get from one place to another.
"Waiting weeks for information — we'll be able to turn that into, like, instantaneous results," Joy said.
The system Nunavut will use for its e-health records is designed by Meditech, a U.S.-based company that has similar systems in other Canadian jurisdictions.
"It saves an unbelievable amount of time writing and … the amount of mistakes disappear, practically," said Aurora Cisternis, a nurse at the health centre in the remote Nunavut hamlet of Sanikiluaq.
Cisternis said she has worked with electronic records elsewhere, but she worries health staff in other small Nunavut communities will struggle with the technology.
"You have to have the resource people that can help you," she said.
Joy said while it won't be easy to implement the e-health records system, the Health Department plans to provide training.
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Quelle/Source: CBC News, 07.10.2010
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