From my perspective, if we're asking what can be done, I see two areas, and I have some comments on the notion of standards.
From my perspective, we have to continue to focus on primary care reform in Canada. We're at 40% penetration, 39% depending on the numbers, of EMRs within clinicians using EMRs. Many countries are sitting at 90% or a percentage in the high eighties. So we have a huge gap just in terms of moving information into an electronic fashion and then making it accessible.
I think primary care reform.... The focus on putting EMRs with physicians is going to help us drive a lot of the other programs that we're trying to put in place around chronic disease management, medication management, etc.
The second comment I would make is that as Canadians we have spent the better part of 10 years focusing on standards, from 2000 to 2010. From my perspective, what we need to focus on is what we are trying to achieve in terms of health outcomes. Let's not fund on meeting a certain standard; let's fund on getting to certain meaningful uses. So let's fund outcomes. Let the market sort out, frankly, the notion of standards. We've spent so much time, a good part of 10 years, on a blueprint and on standards, and we haven't moved the bar.
One of the things we need to do is.... I would say the latest funding that was done with Infoway was funding that was more around projects and innovation and bringing solutions to market. For example, our Lawson project with the Lawson Health Research Institute was partially funded by Canada Health Infoway, but it was not funded on meeting a certain standard; it was funded on meeting a certain outcome.
From our perspective, we need to shift our funding from standards-based to funding that's outcomes-based. The U.S. is doing a pretty good job on that right now.