Mr. Chair, before I answer your question directly, I should say that we have a primary role, and the primary role is basically to provide better care at the point of service. The primary role includes the prevention of adverse drug events.
Earlier on, we had a comment about the cost. There have been studies done in Canada that show that between 9,000 and 24,000 Canadians are killed or suffer serious injury every year. Many of these are preventable, and 70% of them are because of fluids and drugs, adverse effects from drugs. Seniors are generally on a minimum of 12 medications, so--in terms of preventing--the systems that we're funding are systems that, at the time of prescribing, will enable you to see medication histories and to see what you're prescribing, and whether it will in fact have a likely adverse event with what the individual is on already. So that's the prevention side.
In terms of adverse events occurring--or in some cases, unexpected results where you're trying to kill one ailment and it increases cardiovascular risk, etc.--that's certainly possible to do on a population basis. When you start to look at people who are on a particular drug, and what their outcomes have been all the time, and why their outcomes have...or how their lab tests have spiked, that is certainly possible in terms of the secondary uses of data.
We've really just dipped our toe in, in terms of the reporting aspects in B.C., where I believe four out of the six health regions are reporting adverse events from neonatal units. From my understanding--and certainly that of the clinician who's running it--it is relatively easy to do, and it does really increase the numbers that are reported and the feedback mechanism that steps in to stop that from occurring.