Health committee  I think you were asking about leftover drugs.

Health committee  That's a real problem, and everybody deals with that differently. In the clinic that I'm in, we thrive on the leftover drugs, to use them on patients who otherwise wouldn't get them. So if a drug isn't working, we'll keep it in the refrigerator and give it to someone who needs it

Health committee  We're in the electronic age, and any physician who is not in the electronic age is a dinosaur. I think this bears on a lot of the questions that have been raised here today. I have a computer on my desk. I'm using it constantly throughout the day. Not too long ago, I was computer

Health committee  I think it's good to move to more transparency. We've been advocating that for a long time. In Ontario, Bill 102 was supposed to provide this transparency. I don't think it has, but all the regulations have not come through yet and we're waiting to hear. Certainly, the secrecy

Health committee  I think any unwanted effect is an adverse effect. This is why I include failure to work as an adverse effect. Any unwanted effect from any intervention is an adverse effect. That's how I would define it.

Health committee  In terms of the cost, I'm not in that field, but I would think that the cost should not be that great. If you take the example of one computer screen to put this information into and then the information is all collected electronically, it's really setting up the program that wou

Health committee  I think what someone really needs to be looking at is how health care information can be collected and disseminated appropriately. Health care management across the country, in terms of information technology, is about 10 years behind the rest of industry. Why that is, I really c

Health committee  It's incumbent upon and actually a legal obligation for the physician to inform the patient of the potential for benefits and the potential for doing harm. That's the only way you can get informed consent. There are many legal opinions on this. Certainly, as a practising physicia

Health committee  Well, they're not allowed to promote the off-label use. Certainly in the oncology community there aren't that many of us across the country, and we soon learn what works and what doesn't. We should be collecting that knowledge and disseminating it more widely, and we're not.

Health committee  In my oncology practice, when a drug is administered to a patient, if it's not working, we stop. I think that's only good medicine. I think any other physician here would say the very same thing. Why I think I've come to this committee is because we should learn from those exper

Health committee  Off-label use is a very good thing, I think. In the case of one of the drugs we use to control pain, gabapentin, 90% is used off label. The label is for epilepsy, but in terms of controlling cancer pain, patients receiving gabapentin often need only about 10% of the amount of mor

Health committee  Thank you for recognizing the importance of post-market surveillance and for providing the opportunity to many groups like ours to present suggestions for improvements. We are very gratified that you've seen fit to act on one of our previous recommendations, made when we presen