Thank you, Madam Chair.
Honourable members of the Standing Committee on Health, it's my privilege and honour to participate in and contribute to this session on e-health and telemedicine.
According to a 2012 report, more people globally today have better access to mobile phones than to electricity and safe water. Modern information and communication technologies such as smart phones, portable computing devices, and computers to access the Internet, social media and apps surround Canadians and are used by them every day for banking, travel, checking on investments, and accessing government services. Not surprisingly, Canadians turn to these technologies also for information to address their health needs and to live healthier lives. In 2010 Statistics Canada found that 8 out of 10 Canadians age 16 and older use the Internet for personal use. Out of them, 64 out of 100, almost two-thirds of them, search for medical and health information online.
E-health, the use of computers, smart phones, and other computing devices technologies to provide health services, is not only a theoretical possibility but it has clearly been demonstrated to improve health. Some examples of this have already been cited. For example, people in rural and remote parts of our country see doctors and nurses in medical centres for health services and consultations that they cannot physically access in their own communities. Citizens use text messages to help them quit smoking or as reminders to take medications so that they can reap the full benefits of medication provided to them. People use smart phones to monitor their own heart rates, to monitor how far they have walked or how long they have exercised, or to automatically send out an email for help when they fall at home. Governments monitor the health status of citizens through electronic health records to more smartly invest health care dollars to address the population's unique needs.
The evidence that e-health can improve our Canadian health care system is irrefutable. The opportunity and the challenge that lie ahead of us are not whether e-health can help, but how to integrate e-health throughout our health system in Canada.
For example, six years ago my son, who was 12 years old at the time, asked me why we couldn't make an appointment with our doctor online. I submit to you that this is still a relevant question today for the majority of our citizens across Canada.
What about accessing our own health information, laboratory results, X-ray results, biopsy results online, and then have our own doctor or a nurse help us understand their relevance?
Things are improving. Thanks to the leadership, such as from Canada Health Infoway and Health Canada, we're seeing positive changes. The question is how to accelerate this change so Canadians can benefit from e-health faster, better, and safer.
Based on experience here at the University of British Columbia, Faculty of Medicine, eHealth Strategy Office, I'd like to submit a few suggestions for the Standing Committee on Health to consider.
First, how do we involve our health professionals to use e-health in partnership with our patients and the general public? It has been shown that patients whose health care providers use technologies are much more likely to turn to e-health themselves. While many health professionals are actively using e-health, many more are currently not, because this is not their current practice pattern, or there's a lack of familiarity or understanding of the range of e-health that is there or the benefits for their patients.
We need to encourage practising health professionals through continuing education. We need to embed e-health training into medical schools, nursing schools, pharmacies, and other health professional training programs to increase the uptake of e-health. We need to encourage health professionals to work with and work in partnership with the general public to explore how technology can improve communication and to support patients to optimize their health in truly living out the concepts and practice of patient-centred care.
At UBC, our medical school is integrating e-health training into our medical student training. We are planning conferences and continuing education to help health professionals in British Columbia—doctors, nurses, pharmacists—to immediately integrate e-health in the province into their practices. We are working in partnership with the B.C. Ministry of Health's patients as partners program to involve our public as partners in e-health.
These are some examples of how we might engage the public and health professionals in working together on e-health.
Second, we need to explore gaps in our current health system and identify ways e-health can fill these gaps—mind the gap, as subway systems would remind us. Let's not introduce the latest technology, the leading edge, into our health system, just because we can. How do we find innovative and cost-effective ways existing technology can help address the challenges we have in our health system?
How can technology help citizens at home who have trouble leaving their homes to access needed health services? How can we leverage technology to help patients being discharged from emergency departments or from hospital—I'm an emergency physician myself—who need a little bit of extra help and monitoring at home before full recovery? What about rural citizens not needing to travel long distances to urban centres, spending hours and sometimes a full day on the road, just to have a 15-minute appointment with a specialist for a routine follow-up after surgery, perhaps, or a few weeks before. Think about the inconvenience, discomfort, and challenge of that travel.
These situations and many more do not require cutting-edge technologies to improve wellness and quality of care. What we need to do is find ways to integrate the technologies we have today to help them.
Third, we need to innovate on health policies that guide the progressive introduction of e-health into our health system. This policy hopefully would be informed by evidence as to what types of e-health can best improve access, quality, productivity, and cost-effectiveness. Health policy-makers, working hand in hand with e-health researchers, clinicians, patients, and industry partners, can most effectively design sound policies. Our partners can help monitor the successes and help improve and refine these policies based on progressively improving outcomes.
The UBC Faculty of Medicine has been very fortunate to contribute to some of these evidence-based policy efforts. For example, we carried out a literature review on telemental health for the Ministry of Health. We have undertaken a national benefits evaluation of e-health in first nations aboriginal communities, working hand in hand with the Health Canada first nations and Inuit health branch. We contributed to the World Health Organization Global Observatory for eHealth 2011 report on telemedicine for underserved communities.
The International Telecommunication Union in Geneva declared in November 2011 that broadband communications are a basic universal human right, on par with the right to food, health, and housing. In Canada, we're blessed with excellent broadband infrastructure, a great health system with dedicated health policy-makers and professionals who want to improve it, and citizens keenly interested in accessing digital technology for health and wellness. We can and must use e-health effectively, cost-effectively, and responsibly to improve our health system and the health and wellness of our citizens.
Academic institutions like the UBC Faculty of Medicine would love to support, contribute to, and work, with you, to advance this cause. The evidence is there. We simply need to work together to bring the evidence into routine practice in our Canadian health care system to achieve our desired goal. Citizens will be able to find and trust health services online to help them live well and thrive.