Health committee  The very nature of providing clinical records over an electronic application means that you identify the patient. The very fact of collecting the information in a way that is not bound to a site.... Imagine the hospital of the past, with rooms full of charts and the archives that

Health committee  I think a 10-year horizon is necessary because the job in front of us is so large. I'm an optimist. I believe in 10 years from now you're going to see some huge improvements. I caution against the silver bullet syndrome. There is a tendency for us to believe there's a chunk of m

Health committee  Let me try it. I'm sorry for this, but there isn't a single, simple answer. Unfortunately, that's just the nature of health care, and you know this very well. I can use the example of hospitals. There are many studies showing that electronically enabled hospitals are far more ef

Health committee  Would it be possible? Anything's possible, but it's very unlikely in the system we have. There is the question that one size does not fit all. A solution for Manitoba doesn't always fit in Ontario, because Ontario is ten times its size. I would encourage you in Ontario to look

Health committee  Urban settings are much easier to solve. I think if you went into Mississauga, you would see that the hospitals in and around the Mississauga area are doing that today.

Health committee  We don't believe so. We believe we can handle those three different vendors. There is information sharing amongst physicians who are using different ones of these two or three vendors, and maybe across in Saskatchewan, if you're in a border community, and so on.

Health committee  I'm not sure of the total. Ontario has a very long list. I suspect we have vendors that are on their list.

Health committee  It's going to be a very pleasant problem to have, because the information we will have will be automated. It will already be captured electronically and I'll actually be able to send it over. Hopefully, it will make sense when you get it and it's not Greek. The Manitoba version m

Health committee  I mentioned in my presentation that we spent $240 million roughly since the beginning of the year, of which roughly $67 million came from Infoway. The savings were identified by Canada Health Infoway many years ago as roughly two to one, a $10 billion cost and a $20 billion retur

Health committee  No. The EMR is the record that is usually being used by the physician. It's semantics, I realize that. The electronic medical record is being used by the doctor in their clinic, supporting their clinic. The image itself usually doesn't go into the EMR. The report will go into the

Health committee  Correct.

Health committee  Unfortunately, when we're dealing with physician's offices—if we can just limit the discussion to physician's offices and the automation of physician's offices—we have three vendors in our province. We worked with the doctors to select three vendors. They tend to be vendors that

Health committee  No. Could you repeat it?

Health committee  There are two parts to this answer. First, if you look at e-health writ large, the large issue of e-health, it divides up into two pieces. There's one piece that is funded by Infoway, so Canada Health Infoway has a program of funding. Generally speaking, to my understanding, the

Health committee  Thank you. You said we were further along, or we appear to be, in Manitoba than in the rest of the country. First off, I cannot comment on the situation in the rest of Canada. We have contractual commitments with Infoway. That was one of the themes of my presentation, in fact. W