IfG.CC - The Institute for eGovernment

Although the procurement of important (and often very expensive) e-Health technology infrastructure projects have very different structures and risks associated with them, they share one of the most common procurement mistakes – the frequent failure to fully and clearly define the procured technology in terms of its detailed operational, functional and technical specifications in the procurement contract.

Telehealth is the use of communication technologies, such as videoconferencing, to deliver health, wellness and educational services from a distance. Peripheral devices such as exam cameras, stethoscopes, portable ultrasound machines and ophthalmoscopes can be attached to videoconferencing units to enhance clinical sessions.

The experimental Telehealth program has been expanded to the northern B.C. communities of Hazelton, Houston, Kitwanga and Telkwa.

The Telehealth program is a provincial initiative which uses videoconferencing and other new technology to connect children and teenagers suffering from various mental illnesses to consult directly some of the best Canadian psychiatrists from Vancouver and other large cities.

Eastern Ontario is getting an extra $950,000 a year in provincial funding to expand a telemedicine program that allows rural residents to get speedier care closer to home.

The expanded program would allow more patients in the Ottawa Valley to meet by video conference with medical specialists at The Ottawa Hospital.

The health network is seeing an increase in the use of telemedine technology across Northeastern Ontario because it is such an effective tool to connect doctors and patients.

Colleen Harrison says her 10-month-old daughter Abigail burned her hand with a cup of tea. "I guess because of her age... she didn't know enough to take her hand out of it so she was kind of standing there with her hand in this freshly boiled cup of tea. And I pretty much knew right away it wasn't going to be a nice burn." Doctors in North Bay recomended Harrison attend the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto but she was able to have the burn examined via a camera feed between North Bay and Toronto.

Mr. Bushby, 57, is part of an Internet-based health-care program that monitors heart patients at home instead of requiring them to show up in person. Developed at St. Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver, the technology has saved him hours of travel for appointments – he lives in Abbotsford, B.C., about 70 kilometres away – and given him peace of mind, he says.

Alan Price had a successful career in the video game industry as chief technology officer for EA Canada.

But a desire to create games that would do more than simply entertain, combined with a transformation in his industry that has seen video games shift from consoles to smartphones and social networks, prompted Price to join the burgeoning digital health sector where he's creating wellness apps for kids.

Over and again, delegates to e-Health 2012: Innovating Health e-Care, Canada’s annual gathering of e-health administrators, suppliers and users, were told that monolithic, centralized e-health databases are as outmoded as fax machines and other electronic devices which have long been supplanted by superior technologies and more efficient ways of doing things.

It’s a bold new mobile world out there that is poised to revolutionize health care, Dr. John Hamalka, chief information officer of the Harvard (University) Medical School and the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts, said in his keynote address to the gathering in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Digital skills can no longer be seen as just an “IT” thing in government. A baseline level of digital literacy is need for every public servant.

Let’s take a step back in time 20 years to 1999. Personal computers were becoming more powerful and affordable, and increasingly a common part of work, school, and home life. The Internet as we know it was barely 10 years old. Web pages were starting to populate the World Wide Web at a dizzying rate. Governments were getting into the Internet scene, and Canada was kicking off its Government On-Line initiative, making available online 130 of its most commonly used services, spending $880 million to do it.

Just over a year later, SSC’s president Liseanne Forand returned to the Government Technology Exhibition and Conference to announce that 6,000 employees have been recruited from various government departments with timelines set for a 2015 delivery.

For our most vulnerable citizens, we need to create a trove of ‘what works’ data that will allow for help that is tailored to the individual.

Finding better ways of wiring for e-government is important and necessary. Nobody would disagree with the need for better computing, electronic communications and information management.

In a recent study done by Juniper Research ranking the top five smart cities in the world, Toronto, Ont. received the bronze medal.

The market research and analysis company ranked 50 world cities based on an evaluation of many different smart city aspects, including transportation and infrastructure, energy and lighting, city management and technology, and urban connectivity.

This prompts an interesting question and opportunity – What is meant by a single network? Is it a single supplier, or a single logical environment?

A new study released this week shows that telehealth in Canada has grown by more than 35 per cent annually over the past five years. According to Canada Health Infoway -- the government-funded organization that invests with provinces in telehealth initiatives -- the country now has more than 5,700 telehealth systems in at least 1,175 communities across the country.

While many people think of dial-a-nurse systems when they think of telehealth, the term actually refers to a whole spectrum of services and includes all kinds of telephone and Web-based technologies for delivering health services.

Ladysmith's Susan McAdam saw the toll travel took on her ill 85-year-old mother as they drove to a respiratory specialist in Victoria.

She was stressed and in pain, with her condition only worsening during the hour-long ride.

"It was really hard on her," McAdam said. "We'd have to travel down to Victoria only to have a 10 minute appointment and turn around."

Global initiatives deploy technology to improve quality of life in urban centres

When nudged about the possibility of Sidewalk Labs striking up an initiative in Vancouver, the response from one representative of the Google sister company was rather coy.

Sidewalk Labs, an Alphabet Inc. (Nasdaq:GOOGL) subsidiary specializing in using innovation to address urban issues ranging from transportation to energy consumption, is best known for its smart-city ambitions along Toronto’s waterfront.

Next month, the Ontario Telemedicine Network, which links roughly 3,000 healthcare professionals at 1,200 hospitals and medical clinics throughout the Canadian province with 2,200 videoconferencing stations, will make it possible for physicians and other caregivers to participate from their PCs. The go-live, involving 50 health professionals, will use software provided by Vidyo, based in Hackensack, N.J.

The goal, officials say, is to link healthcare providers and remote patients through their own computers.

RelayHealth has been in use in the United States for more than a decade where 17 million patients and 32,000 doctors use the web-based service.

Since it was launched in the late fall by McKesson Canada, RelayHealth is in the process of working with two pilot sites to implement its service, which is aimed at allowing patients and health-care providers to exchange information. The ability to share test results, book appointments, make electronic referrals along with prescription renewal and refill requests are among its touted features.

eHealth Saskatchewan CEO Susan Antosh said, “We are emerging into a world of huge possibilities in technology allowing people access and information to empower them to be an active partner and decision maker in care options”.

In a new study published in Health Affairs a group of American researchers looked at the records of patient visits to a sample of office-based physicians to find out whether doctors with electronic access to imaging results ordered more tests than doctors without them. Surprise, surprise: the researchers found that the digital doctors were 40 to 70 per cent more likely to order imaging, and even blood tests, than doctors without access.