Backblog | eHealth

Dr. Ann Cavoukian's presentation on why freedom of information matters and how organizations and individual healthcare providers can prevent privacy breaches. The 'circle of care', a term used in the context of sharing information with implied consent, is discussed as is Ontario’s Experience with PHIPA.

You may be a physician, software developer or may just see a business opportunity. Millions of dollars are bing invested in health IT and electronic health records. Healthcare costs continue to climb and the only logical solution appears to be process automation as has happened in other industries such as travel and banking. EMR adoption has stalled in a number of provinces. There must be an opportunity for a new EMR system. Right?

The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas is the largest trade show of its kind worldwide. With 140,000 attendees, all the glitz and hype it’s all too easy to miss some really interesting new products that can be game changers.

It is more than one year since the US HITECH Act was announced, which defined the Meaningful Use incentive program to encourage adoption of EMRs by eligible providers including physicians and nurse practitioners. (Note: The terms EMR and EHR are used interchangeably in the U.S., although in Canada they applied specifically to physician systems vs. regional provincial electronic record systems.) So, what has happened in both countries over the past 18 months and how do the national programs compare against one another?

How many physicians are using social media for a variety of communication needs? While the number of physicians with Facebook accounts is likely to be significant, I am quite sure that the majority of use is personal. Some interesting questions are begining to surface regarding the ethics of using social media tools in clinical practice.

I had an opportunity to spend some time wandering around Vancouver last weekend and the one store that caught my eye was HMV at the corner of Burrard and Robson. Initially a flagship store for this retailer in Vancouver, HMV has tried to reinvent itself adding electronics and a variety of other mechandise to stave off the hemorrhaging from loss of sales of its traditional business — music. For that it can thank the revolution started by Napster with the final nail in the coffin being the launch of Apple’s iTunes store and a new model for purchasing music in which users were able to personalize their selection and disaggregate the individual tracks from the album.

I began to write this blog post using my newly acquired iPhone 4S, but once I had access to my laptop, I reverted to a more comfortable (and familiar) form factor. Until recently, I was a strong advocate for the Blackberry, which I have used for the last seven years; however, the recent network outage did impact me and resulted in missed calls and communications that needed to be acted upon earlier than received.

87% of Canadians support the use of electronic medical records (EMRs) and 9 in 10 people are interested in having access to their own medical records.

Medical resident data from the 2010 National Physician Survey was released on September 28 confirming widespread exposure to information technology while in training.

Nero (37 AD to 68 AD) is notoriously known as the Emperor who 'Fiddled while Rome burned'. While this idiom is recognized to be erroneous — the fiddle was only invented in the 16th century — it signifies 'doing something trivial and irresponsible in the midst of an emergency'.

In the tablet world, the iPad is king. Sony is one of the latest entrants to the tablet market with the release of their new Tablet S, however is the new Sony product an iPad killer (or even an iPad competitor)?

According to the 2010 National Physician Survey, 16.1% of physicians use electronic records instead of paper charts in their main patient care setting. (In 2007, this number was 9.8%.) While we see improvement in the adoption of EMRs over the three-year period, these numbers are not stellar by any means. There is a big difference between implementing an EMR and effectively using the system to enhance the way that care is delivered. The 2010 survey also indicated that 34.1% of physicians use a combination of paper and electronic charts — twice the number that use EMR alone.

What a tumultuous week in technology. Almost on the heels of the announcement that Google was buying Motorola, Hewlett-Packard announced the retirement of their recently released Touchpad tablet as well as a potential strategic change in direction from consumer technology products to business software with the spin-off or sale of their computer division. It is no small shift when the largest computer supplier in the world states they are planning on exiting the hardware market. Things are changing and fast.

Healthcare is extremely political in Canada! No big surprise to anyone who has been involved in health administration or planning, perhaps because healthcare is viewed as a national right under the Canada Health Act.

Paul Lepage, Senior Vice President of TELUS Health Solutions, dicussed the current shift in healthcare in Canada in his presentation The Care Continuum at eHealth 2011 in May.

The following email was received from a private diagnostic facility in Toronto. While it may be tempting to point a finger at the “for profit” nature of private diagnostics, competitive markets tend to drive efficiency and non-performers simply go out of business. As more physicians adopt EMRs, the demand for ways to leverage EMRs and improve efficiency is bound to grow.

Funding programs to support EMR adoption have been available in Canada for almost 10 years. However, these programs were never intended to fund EMRs indefinitely.

There is an interesting thread of conversation that is beginning to wage on adoption of EMRs by physicians. This was triggered by a comment made by Tom Closson, President and CEO of the Ontario Hospital Association (OHA), at the recent eHealth Conference in Toronto.

From time-to-time, one reads about security breaches as a result of a computer being stolen containing patient's personal health information or breaches as a result of a network being hacked (as occurred recently to Sony's online gaming community). However, as more information is stored in the 'Cloud', how secure is that data and how worried should we be about breaches?

The 2010 National Physician Survey Results are now available online. The numbers tell an interesting story regarding the adoption and use of EMRs.

Along with millions of others, earlier this week, I watched a very frail looking Steve Jobs address attendees at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco. In addition to demonstrating new operating systems for the Mac and the iPhone/iPad, Apple announced the new iCloud service.

Do you have a job opening you would like to post? Job postings are open to anyone involved directly or indirectly in healthcare as a physician, practice manager, program administrator, vendor, or a healthcare IT professional.

At CanadianEMR, we receive information and feedback from many sources: physicians who submit EMR ratings, users’ comments on the CanadianEMR blog, communications from media and industry representatives, feedback from practice managers and administrative staff. As a result of all of this feedback, we function to some degree as an early warning system. Even if comments are not explicit, it is possible to draw conclusions from overall feedback.

I had a discussion earlier this week [original blog post dated May 4, 2011] with an EMR vendor who described an interesting trend. It is his impression that as we move along the adoption curve for EMRs beyond the early adopters and early majority into the late majority, it is becoming more difficult to implement EMRs in medical practices.

Social media in healthcare is big! By that I mean big in terms of its impact on patient behaviour and expectations of their healthcare providers, and big in terms of how broad reaching and pervasive the social media phenomenon is.

With the launch of the new BlackBerry Playbook in Canada this week, the choice of tablets for physicians just became a little broader. However, despite the more portable form factor in comparison to Apple’s iPad2, there are a number of reviews that have been highly critical of the Playbook.

As practices convert from primarily paper-based process to technology-based systems, what are the occupational impacts of these changes? How much does the ergonomic design of examination rooms, areas designated for document scanning or the use of desktop, laptop or tablet based computers impact the health of workers?

During a recent vacation I had an opportunity to test my own decision making with respect to the value of consumer ratings. Deciding where to dine out is always one of the pleasant challenges of any holiday.

(Republished from the CanadianEMR Newsletter March 9, 2011) Once you have selected an EMR, signed your contract with the vendor, applied for funding according to provincial protocols (if you qualify), and scheduled a date to implement the system, the real hard work begins. Implementation can be a smooth and streamlined process if you are well prepared or it can be disruptive and difficult.

Two articles published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal (February 22, 2011) bring into question Canada's national health IT strategies.

I was talking with a colleague last week about EMR adoption. He expressed his frustration at the lack of coding and interoperability standards between different EMRs available in Canada.

Dr. Rob Schertzer is an opthalmologist in Vancouver and regular contributor to CanadianEMR. He is passionate about the use of technology to improve patient care and will be a guest blogger on CanadianEMR in the future.