I will ask my colleague to speak to some of the other databases and the linkages, but initially I would just make the distinction.
I am not a pharmacist, so this is a distinction that was not initially obvious to me. But in regard to the language, we were asked and funded specifically to develop a database to gather information on “medication incidents”, which are distinct from, as I've learned, “adverse events”. Medication incidents are really about the processes of care.
Certainly I think we've seen a number of hospitals in this country that have had tragedies in emergency rooms, for example, where medications that looked very similar or that were stored in an emergency room were inappropriately given and they had tragic results. The concern was that one of these situations occurred in eastern Canada—I think it was in Halifax, or within Nova Scotia—one occurred in Saskatchewan when I was there, and they've occurred in Alberta, yet it seemed we had no place to actually collect those kinds of problems. So we were funded specifically and asked to develop a database to collect in-hospital medication incidents.
I think it will be a very important database. Currently we've developed the structure to find the definitions. The system is ready for piloting in September. I should be clear that at this time I can't answer what proportion or what kinds of inputs we will get to that.
We have been working with others, such as the Canadian Patient Safety Institute, because we realize it will take on-the-ground support for individual physicians and hospitals to be encouraged to actually submit data to the database. We have partnerships there to try to encourage that kind of submission so that we can build the database so we don't have to make the same mistakes in one part of the country as we've made in the other, but rather, we can learn from them.
The distinction that I've had to appreciate, since learning of this, is “medication incidents” versus “adverse events”. When we do get data, at the current time it's designed to do the one and not the other.
I'll ask my colleague to speak to some of the linkages you mentioned.