Health committee  As you suspected, it was a little bit of everything. Certainly, the availability of Infoway dollars and some of the projects I mentioned were key because it created the right kind of momentum for the province to co-invest according to the standards of Infoway. A lot of these projects, the digital imaging project and so on, were funded probably about 50-50 with the province.

Health committee  If I might add a few more words, just to step back a little, from a province-wide point of view, first of all, I believe.... You could probably get a copy of the scorecard from Infoway. Infoway actually measures the performance of every province. I believe there are activities that are quite similar in every province of Canada.

Health committee  Well, not all health practices need a doctor hands-on, certainly not a specialist. This does not replace the health care practitioners—the nurses, the nurse practitioners, and so on who are in these communities. The whole area of self-care is a different topic; Dr. Cafazzo spoke a bit to that.

Health committee  Thank you, Madam Chair.

Health committee  First of all, I appreciation the promotion. It's “Mister” Girard, but I'll take “Doctor”. The way you go about implementing an electronic health record in a small province—it's a large province geographically, but a relatively small province by comparison with Ontario or Quebec or some of the other larger jurisdictions—is a bit simpler, but it has the same moving parts, so it's very complex.

Health committee  Yes. It's in my report. We did a study with Canada Health Infoway, just for the Manitoba portion of our clientele. We estimate $2.6 million of patient savings. It's family savings, in most cases, because the burden of transportation for Manitobans—in first nations situations, it's a different formula—was $2.6 million worth of savings and about a million kilometres of travel that was avoided.

Health committee  Let me start. I've been in the health care infomatics industry for a very long time. Ten or twelve years ago it would have been impossible to come to a table like this from different provinces and be speaking the same language on this topic. One of the major improvements that Canada Health Infoway has introduced over time, and it has been a long battle these last 10 or 12 years, is in making sure that we are aligned.

Health committee  Good morning. Thank you for the invitation to present to the committee. This is a first for me personally, and it's a privilege to be here today. I am the chief information officer leading Manitoba eHealth, the provincial organization tasked with implementing a variety of information and communication technologies, which we call ICT, in health care.