Madam Chair, honourable members of the committee, I am very pleased to be here today to speak to the use of innovative technology to support the prevention and management of chronic diseases.
As the committee members have heard before, chronic diseases are a significant burden to individuals, families and caregivers, as well as to the Canadian health care system and economy. Most hospitalizations, disabilities and premature deaths are associated with chronic diseases and injuries.
Today, three out of five Canadians live with one or more chronic diseases, and eight out of ten have at least one risk factor—such as physical inactivity, unhealthy diet, smoking and being overweight or obese.
The impact of chronic diseases on the Canadian economy is at least $190 billion annually.
With such a profound impact on the quality of life of Canadians, it is important that we make use of innovative technology to support the prevention of chronic diseases.
Today I will focus my comments on type 2 diabetes and describe how we are using a web-based technology to support Canadians in preventing this chronic disease.
About 2.5 million Canadians live with diabetes and many more are unaware they have this disease. Type 2 is the most common form of diabetes. It accounts for 90% to 95% of all diabetes cases. At the Public Health Agency of Canada, we estimate there are five million Canadians over the age of 20 who are currently pre-diabetic—that's one in five adults. By 2016, we estimate an additional one million new cases of pre-diabetes, and may I say that is driven by increasing overweight and obesity in our population. These are sobering statistics. Pre-diabetes is a key risk factor for developing type 2 diabetes.
Early detection and intervention is an effective diabetes prevention strategy. If we can stop progression from pre-diabetes to diabetes, we will achieve savings both in health and economic terms, and stopping progression means changing the risk factors we can change. Some risks are not modifiable, such as advancing age, our ethnicity, our family history, but other risk factors, such as overweight and obesity, physical inactivity, and an unhealthy diet can be changed.
I don't want to imply to you that changing these behaviours is easy. We know this is not the case. We also know that the environments in which we live can make it more difficult to make these changes, but within this complexity there are tools we can provide Canadians to help them assess and understand their risk and work with health professionals to stay healthy.
Let me describe now how we at the Public Health Agency of Canada are helping Canadians take control of their own health. We've developed a risk assessment tool called CANRISK. It's a scientifically validated Canadian diabetes risk questionnaire, and it's targeted at adults aged 40 to 74. This is a made-in-Canada risk assessment tool. It was adapted from the Finnish version, but CANRISK takes additional risk factors for our Canadian context into consideration: ethnicity, education, and gestational diabetes, to name a few.
Using web-based technology, CANRISK is a simple tool that calculates a risk score for pre-diabetes and diabetes. As each question is answered, information on healthy living and diabetes prevention pops up on the screen, so users receive educational material at the same time they're thinking about their diabetes risk.
CANRISK was first announced by the federal health minister in November 2011, when it was rolled out in partnership with Shoppers Drug Mart and at Pharmaprix in the province of Quebec. This was an important first step to making this tool available to Canadians. By putting CANRISK in pharmacies, Canadians can receive counselling and further information from these trusted health professionals in their communities. New collaborations are taking place to expand the reach of CANRISK.
In order to facilitate the use of this risk assessment tool and meet the demands of health practitioners, CANRISK is available in 11 alternate languages that can be used by Canada's ethnic populations, some of whom are at higher risk for type 2 diabetes. In addition to English and French, the CANRISK assessment tool and its accompanying guide to diabetes prevention are available in Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, Spanish, and Punjabi, to name just a few. So far, over 51,000 Canadians have accessed CANRISK online.
Of course we want to keep pace with the advances in telecommunication technologies, so we've developed a mobile phone application for this risk assessment tool. As health professionals are increasingly exploring the use of mobile technologies to access the latest guidelines and tools, they're better able to support their patients in real time, both in the doctor's office or, in this case, at the pharmacy. For example, with our Apple iPhone you can simply search the app store, download CANRISK, and use it for free. Users can seek further information about diabetes and its risk factors, and they can share the web link to CANRISK with friends and family through social media sites or by e-mail. We're also planning to develop an app for Android devices.
Since the launch of the mobile app—and that was only about two months ago—CANRISK has been downloaded over 500 times from countries all over the world: from France, China, Hong Kong, Thailand, Switzerland, and Russia, as well as from the United Kingdom and the United States. Indications are that CANRISK is catching on. People want to access and use it.
I want to emphasize how CANRISK use is spreading in Canadian pharmacies. We started our collaboration with Shoppers Drug Mart/Pharmaprix, but CANRISK is also now available in Pharmasave and Rexall stores. We are working with others as well and are aiming to have CANRISK in over 2,000 pharmacies across the country.
Why are we focusing on pharmacies? More and more pharmacists provide a point of regular, frequent contact for many Canadians. They answer a broad range of health questions, and they can provide reliable information and encouragement on ways to live healthier and prevent chronic diseases. They are integral parts of communities and they know the contexts in which their clients live. This ongoing relationship is important to the sustained message on healthy living.
I am proud to tell you that the Canadian Pharmacists Association is promoting and evaluating the use of CANRISK by its members because it wants to help build its capacity to deliver public health messages on diabetes prevention and to support Canadians in taking action to prevent type 2 diabetes and other chronic diseases.
So simple technologies, delivered in the right place and at the right time, with credible support and encouragement, are a component of our prevention work.
There is currently significant momentum in Canada to develop partnerships that support healthy living and ultimately prevent chronic diseases. These partnerships include the public, private and voluntary sectors.
The Public Health Agency of Canada is encouraging innovation through these partnerships, and CANRISK is one good example.
Thank you.