Thank you, Madam Chair.
Welcome to the witnesses.
This is not usually the committee I sit on, so I'm finding this discussion quite interesting and a little alarming.
There's the whole discussion on informed decision-making. If you don't have a process that's entirely transparent and you don't have that risk versus benefit list, how can you make informed decisions? I guess that's more of a rhetorical statement than anything else, but it's very difficult. I don't know how you do that.
The other thing I'm quite shocked about is the electronic health records. I listened to my colleagues talk about doctors' handwriting, which is an old joke, but they're not alone. Most people have illegible handwriting today. There's hardly a kid in school who can write so you can read it, but everyone can use a keyboard.
I think we've looked in the wrong area. We've been blaming the doctors when we should be giving them more assistance in filling out the electronic records. They're busy; they're trying to see as many patients as they can in a day. Frankly, there's no reason why a doctor shouldn't be able to tell their assistant to fill out a prescription for the pharmacy so that it comes to you in typed format.
I don't understand why we don't have a complete electronic record in this day and age, especially at the hospital level. It just doesn't make any sense. It would be easy to do. You wouldn't even need a patient's sheet to write on. You would have a keyboard instead. It would come up on the screen and automatically go out to everybody.
I don't know how many drugs are allowed into Canada and registered every year, but I assume there are hundreds of them.