Even though I work in the health care sector, I will say to anybody who listens that the most important part of our health care system is our primary care, the health promotion, disease prevention components. I think if you look at some of the initiatives we're doing, one is aimed specifically at keeping people out of hospital by providing care at home. The other is ensuring that the primary care providers have information on their patients in real time. I think that's probably the biggest barrier to research in primary care. It's the lack of electronic health records to be able to pull information in an easy way.
We've seen in the last five years, with the introduction of family health teams in the province of Ontario, a much more robust ability to generate data. I think there are really great opportunities now if we can approach the physician groups that are now in place across the province with specific questions that will allow research. I think it's really important.
The sustainability of the acute care system depends on how strong the primary care system is, quite frankly, and how healthy the population is. Isn't that right?
On the role of the federal government, personally, I feel there's a very important role around ensuring standards, ensuring that the five principles of the Canada Health Act are adhered to provincially, and ensuring that infrastructure is available in a consistent way across the country. Canada Health Infoway is a good example of that, where we can access pipelines for data flow, which is hugely important to our ability to provide care.