Innovative health care e-solutions recognized: Canada Health Infoway announces recipients of ImagineNation Outcomes Challenge Trailblazer Awards

“Innovation is about translating great ideas into results,” said Richard Alvarez, President and CEO of Canada Health Infoway. “With the Trailblazer Awards, we are recognizing teams that not only have innovative e-solutions, but also have creative, practical plans to extend the use of their solutions for the benefit of the patients, clinicians and others.”

Participating teams submitted a video describing how they use an innovative e-solution to provide value to clinicians and patients, as well as a written plan outlining actions they will take to increase the volume of use and the number of users of their solution. 

There are four categories in the Challenge:

• e-Scheduling - solutions that allow patients to book, change and cancel

appointments online or with a mobile device;

• Patient Access to Health Information - solutions that give patients and their families

access to their own personal health information, resources and support;

• Medication Reconciliation - electronic tools to help health care providers work with

patients, families and other clinicians to ensure accurate and comprehensive medication information is communicated consistently across transitions of care; and

• Clinical Synoptic Reporting - electronic tools that improve communication amongst

clinicians using structured summaries of a patient’s health and health care that can be used across the health care team.

Trailblazer Award Recipients

The top three teams in each of the four categories were selected by a panel of more than 30 judges from across Canada. The award recipients are:

e-Scheduling

1^st place: University of British Columbia Student Health Service (Vancouver, BC)
2^nd place: Uptown Family Health Team (Richmond Hill, ON)
3^rd place: Westmount Square Medical Center (Montreal, QC)

Patient Access to Health Information

1^st place: Cancer Care Ontario (Toronto, ON)
2^nd place: University of British Columbia Student Health Service (Vancouver, BC)
3^rd place: Fraser Health Authority (New Westminster, BC)

Medication Reconciliation

1^st place: The Ottawa Hospital (Ottawa, ON)
2^nd place: Mount Sinai Hospital (Toronto, ON)
3^rd place: British Columbia Provincial Renal Agency (Vancouver, BC)

Clinical Synoptic Reporting

1^st place: University Health Network (Toronto, ON)
2^nd place: Integrated Hospital Laboratories Service of Windsor-Essex (Windsor, ON)
3^rd place: Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre (Toronto, ON)

“We’re thrilled to be recognized as an Outcomes Challenge Trailblazer,” said Dr. Patricia Mirwaldt of the University of British Columbia Student Health Service, an award recipient in two categories. “These awards will allow us to provide even more value to our students by creating a mobile application that fully integrates with our current software and allows instant use in a secure manner of the electronic medical record from virtually anywhere.”

The Outcomes Challenge

The Outcomes Challenge offers more than one million dollars in awards, to be shared by teams whose solutions are used most and those with the strongest growth in users in the four Challenge categories. The goal of the Challenge is to accelerate the use of innovative IT solutions with the potential to improve health care quality and the patient experience.

Supporting Organizations

The following Canadian health care organizations are working with Infoway to help shape the Challenge by providing expert advice, encouraging participation, promoting the Challenge and participating in the judging panel:

• Accreditation Canada
• Association of Canadian Academic Healthcare Organizations
• COACH: Canada’s Health Informatics Association
• Canadian Dental Association
• Canadian Home Care Association
• Canadian Partnership Against Cancer
• Canadian Patient Safety Institute
• Health Action Lobby
• Institute for Safe Medication Practices
• Patients’ Association of Canada
• Patients for Patient Safety Canada
• Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada

About Canada Health Infoway

Canada Health Infoway is an independent, not-for-profit organization funded by the federal government. Infoway jointly invests with every province and territory to accelerate the development and adoption of information and communications technology projects in Canada. Fully respecting patient confidentiality, these secure systems will provide clinicians and patients with the information they need to better support safe care decisions and manage their own health. Accessing this vital information quickly will help foster a more modern and sustainable health care system for all Canadians.

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