Information & Ethics committee  I don't have a lot of information around the detail, but I do know that the situation in British Columbia is fairly unique in Canada. First of all, information from both the public and private prescriptions would be collected through the government. All prescriptions in British

Information & Ethics committee  I don't know the details relating to that. I know it has been under review, but I'm not current on the recent changes.

Information & Ethics committee  Absolutely. I would be pleased to talk to my colleagues in the licensing body in British Columbia and get you that information.

Information & Ethics committee  Absolutely we'll do that.

Information & Ethics committee  I think what happens, throughout the history of the pharmacy, is that the data gets collected, in fact, by a whole variety of people, particularly third-party payers, and the data gets released to market research companies. The requirement is that all of this information not incl

Information & Ethics committee  The physician's name is included. What we're saying is that the information.... Let me give you an example. Taking the example that my colleague from the CMA qualified, we wouldn't see that information being allowed for the direct targeting of individual physicians for marketing

Information & Ethics committee  It's a bit of a two-edged sword. It's important that patient information is protected, but you certainly want to make sure you have quite a rich database of information to enable you to manage the system effectively. Some really careful thought has to be given to some of these d

Information & Ethics committee  With pharmacy, the guidelines and codes of practice and posters and brochures that we produce may be used nationally. But all of the provinces have provincial licensing bodies. So the provincial l’Ordre des pharmaciens du Québec will be the regulatory body in Quebec that will oft

Information & Ethics committee  I know of just one example, and it goes back to Mr. Van Kesteren's question. I think one of the things that's important to recognize is that most of the data or information that gets collected is de-identified from a patient's perspective. So a lot of these databases that get cre

Information & Ethics committee  Yes, that's it.

Information & Ethics committee  We would certainly support plain language in consent forms. There are a number of areas of pharmacy practice where patients are required to provide consent. Obviously, we have a lot of experience particularly relating to the development of clinical trials relating to new drugs. T

Information & Ethics committee  I would further add from pharmacy that there are strong sanctions such as codes of ethics and professional standards of practice that require that in law. Certainly colleges of pharmacy are extremely strict in terms of enforcement. There's an added important piece to be conside

Information & Ethics committee  First of all, the drug utilization prescribing data has been collected and used in many different ways for many years. The practice of collecting prescribing data from community pharmacies in Canada has probably gone on for 30 or 40 years. I think it's a very good example—and you

Information & Ethics committee  Yes, that's correct, as I understand it. I have a legal colleague here who can perhaps answer that.

Information & Ethics committee  I just want to clarify. Concerning the harmonization of legislation across Canada, I think the most important piece of work we've seen on that particular area, which we did participate in, was the development of this pan-Canadian framework that I referred to in our presentation.