Blog: Infoway Connects

Posted on April 19, 2017 by Simon Hagens

The Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) in partnership with Choosing Wisely Canada (CWC) has released an important new report: “Unnecessary Care in Canada.”

Posted on April  11, 2017 by Cassie Frazer

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Who are we in the health system? Are we patients? Consumers? Citizens, clients, Canadians? No matter what you call us – we are people. Unique individuals with unique interests and health care needs; and it is important that we are at the table when decisions about our care are being made.

Posted on April 05, 2017 by Marco Lo

My partners and I started Magenta Health, a family medical clinic in Toronto, as an opportunity to innovate, particularly when it comes to the use of technology to improve patient access, convenience, and care.

Posted by Chad Leaver on March 21

Digital health and connected care services are evolving and gaining momentum in Canada. As they do, the link between patient experience and value-based outcomes is critical to both assess opportunities for improvement and determine scalability and integration of connected care solutions into Canadian models of care.

 Posted on February 02, 2017 by Michael Green

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Digital health solutions are key enablers that will help bridge gaps in delivering care and bending cost curves. These solutions are more important than ever as Canada’s federal, provincial and territorial governments participate in a dialogue that will fundamentally transform the services that Canadians want.

Posted on January 19, 2017 by Bobbi Reinholdt

2016 has been a busy year for PrescribeIT^TM.

Since Infoway began working on a multi-jurisdiction e-prescribing solution, we’ve had more than 150 meetings with key stakeholder groups, including provinces, territories, vendors, retail pharmacy, prescribers, regulators, privacy experts, insurers and patients.

Posted on December 5 by Alan Leung

Reflecting on the Infoway Partnership Conference last month, the major themes were collaboration and interoperability. There was also a reminder from a number of speakers to design software or standards in an environment where feedback is actively incorporated and a real-world problem is being solved. It was a great conference for me — I was able to finally meet with many people I've worked with virtually over conference calls. The impromptu conversations also may lead to valuable outcomes. I was impressed by the knowledge and skill of the moderators to prompt discussion and summarize the proceedings.

Posted on November 29, 2016 by  Shelagh Maloney

Thanks to all who participated in Digital Health Week (Nov. 14-20)! The event was very successful in sparking conversations with Canadians about how digital health is empowering them in moving from patients to partners in their care. Collectively we generated over 4,800 tweets that garnered over 23.8 million impressions! Several themes emerged from these conversations. The two that resonated most with me are 1) the importance of including patients in the design of digital health solutions and 2) the ability of digital health to transform the delivery of care.

Posted on November 21, 2016 by Cindy Hollister

With Christmas just around the corner you might wonder, why with great glee, I’ve marked December 15 as “the special day” in my calendar. My eager anticipation of this date actually started on November 8, the launch of the Infoway 2016 LEADing Practice Challenge.

Posted on November 16 by Gilles Leclerc

Will information technology transform healthcare? Like most of you I believe that, without a doubt, it will. Digital records, e-prescribing, connected devices, mobile apps, robotics, telehealth, and artificial intelligence are just a few examples of ongoing changes in health care across the country. But, as the health care system continues its inescapable digital mutation, it may be surprising that up to now limited focus has been put on e-health student education and training in our universities.

Posted on November 15 by Christopher Louizos

I was asked to write a blog regarding the integration of the informatics e-resource for pharmacy students into our curriculum at the University of Manitoba, College of Pharmacy. I found this an interesting task, as this is my first blog post and honestly had never truly reflected on why our curriculum integration was considered a success. I would attribute it to four things:

Posted on November 15 by Lisa Bishop

In this modern, technology-enabled world, how do we encourage the next generation of pharmacists to embrace technology? Although this generation of students has grown up in a digital environment, they aren’t necessarily tech savvy when it comes to providing health care. From adherence reminders, to electronic refills, to viewing clinical information, pharmacists can provide an enhanced level of service to their patients, all with the aid of technology.

Posted on November 14, 2016 by  Shelagh Maloney

Date: Friday, November 18, 2016
Time: 1:00-2:00 p.m. ET
Where: Twitter at #ThinkDigitalHealth

Posted on November 14, 2016 by  Fraser Ratchford

After five years of ImagineNation Challenges, there has been a lot of learning, connecting, and sharing — all of it in the pursuit of improving health and health care in Canada.

Posted on November 8, 2016 by Dr. Michael Hamilton

It’s important not to think of e-prescribing as an isolated end in itself. We really need a whole system and process built around getting medicines to patients — from drug regulation and oversight, to drug manufacturing, to packaging and labelling, through pharmacists and pharmacy software, dispensing systems, and even a patient’s own medicine cabinets. All of these aspects of the system need to interact at a high degree of accuracy and integrity to ensure safety.

Posted on November 7, 2016 by Cassie Frazer

As a parent of adolescents, naturally I was curious about the topic at hand — providing adolescents with access to their electronic personal health information (PHI); and I wondered about the perceptions of others in Canada as well. For me, the question was not, “should adolescents have access to their PHI” as I believe this right exists, but rather “how should this access be facilitated” in an electronic health record environment?

Posted on November 1, 2016 by Bobby Gheorghiu and Sukirtha Tharmalingam

For ten years, Infoway has been exploring with different ways of measuring progress that accurately and coherently convey the progress in digital health across the country. Earlier in our mandate, availability of systems was deemed to be a core measure since it tracks clinical data in provincial/territorial assets for the use of clinicians and other health system professionals. This measure did an excellent job in conveying progress in building infrastructure right up to the point of go-live. However, what it did not do was give an indication of how many people were actually using these systems and how often they were doing so.

Posted on October 31 by Dr. Kumanan Wilson and Katherine Atkinson

In this digital world, people need digital solutions to manage their health and navigate the complex health systems. This is why The Ottawa Hospital mHealth Research Team will be talking about an innovative solution to help Canadians track their immunization records at the 2016 Canada Health Infoway Partnership Conference.

Posted on October 27 by Shelagh Maloney

We live in a digital age and like every other aspect of our lives, Canada’s health system becomes more digital every day. Digital health solutions can be used to book a medical appointment, request a prescription renewal, view health information or consult with a doctor, online. These new technologies are modernizing the health system and making Canadians and their families healthier. Recently we put together a Digital Health Top 10 — what do you think?