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Canada behind in bringing e-health online: report

Canada behind in bringing e-health online: report

Canada has spent more than $10 billion developing electronic health records but continues to lag behind other countries in sharing information among healthcare providers and organizations, says a new report.

Less than 30 per cent of primary care doctors have electronic access to clinical data about a patient who has been seen by a different health organization, says the report from the C.D. Howe Institute.

“We’ve made a tremendous amount of progress in the last two or three years but we’re still behind,” Dennis Protti, co-author of the report and professor emeritus at the School of Health Information Science at the University of Victoria, tells Yahoo Canada News.

“There are parts of the world where every GP, regardless of where they’re practising or how they’re practising, uses technology and communicates electronically with hospitals and specialists… We’re not there yet.”

Some surveys have found that in primary care only 12 per cent of physicians are notified electronically of patients’ interactions with hospitals or send and receive electronic referrals for specialist appointments, says the report from the policy think-tank.

“Part of it is a cultural change,” Protti says.

Electronic health records takes more time and it changes a physicians’ work flow, he says. There are issues of compatibility between facilities and provinces, and training.

But use of electronic health records can improve quality of care and reduce risks such as prescribing errors, says Protti.

“Shared electronic records should be regarded as essential to care as the stethoscope and the thermometer,” says the report.

Jennifer Zelmer, executive vice president of Canada Health Infoway, the federally funded organization overseeing digital health across the country, says Canada is a global leader in telehealth, linking remote patients to healthcare services.

Other areas are still developing, she says.

“This is a new area. We’ve all got a lot of room to learn,” Zelmer tells Yahoo Canada News.

The latest surveys suggest three-quarters of family physicians are now using electronic records, she says.

“That’s a lot more than were even two years ago, but it’s still lower than some of the leading European countries.”

There remain concerns among privacy advocates about the protections in place for sensitive health information as Canada pursues e-health.

One recent report by the Ontario privacy commissioner found an unprecedented number of privacy breaches. Privacy commissioners in several provinces have reported similar problems.

“There’s very little evidence to support that the real driver on this is improved patient outcomes. The real driver is secondary uses and research. They want to support the research industry,” she says.

“What this is really about is the excitement about big data analytics.”

The C.D. Howe report acknowledges the failures, yet says there are many benefits to be achieved.

Among the recommendations to improve digital uptake in health care record-keeping, the report says shared electronic records should be considered essential to care.

It says patients should be able to access their own electronic health records online and clinicians should receive training and incentives to make use of the digital system.

And health care providers should be held accountable for making improvements happen, it says.

“Canadian governments have invested significant resources and effort to date in digitizing health data for a number of organizations and users, including hospitals, diagnostic imaging and labs, etc.,” says the report.

“The next key phase is ensuring the exchange of such information among users.”