Health committee  We have spent an enormous amount of time together with health professionals and with first nations leadership just discussing the concept of e-health and telemedicine in many of those sessions. I think we're at a tipping point now where people actually understand the benefit: our health colleagues were resisting change—and change is not an easy thing—so it was not only with first nations, but internally within the federal bureaucracy.

Health committee  I think what we're seeing in the area of telehealth, which has been where we've invested most of our resources over the last 10 years...we constantly see change in that area to more mobile technologies now: the use of iPads, tablets, iPhones, etc. The technology is getting easier to use from a remote.

Health committee  I think that's exactly it. In most cases where you have, for example, a physician who flies into a community, has a relationship, and then leaves the community and actually uses telehealth, I think the building of that personal touch with community members has been vital and important, and it has brought the health professionals together.

Health committee  My experience in working with eHealth Ontario over the last number of years is that it has taken quite a different track. Here in Ottawa, as you know, the hospitals have gone to iPads, etc. I know that my family physician, for the first time, has deployed an EMR. We're starting to see a lot more deployment in Ontario.

Health committee  The number, which I just looked at today, is that 90% of first nations either have consumer-grade or industrial-strength...so 10% still don't have connectivity in very remote areas, but we're working towards it. We've made big improvements over the last 10 years in working with Aboriginal Affairs and with Industry Canada, the two main departments, so I think we're making great strides.

Health committee  I'll speak to the B.C. activity in e-health. B.C. first nations have always been leaders in e-health, and there is an acknowledgement that that's going to really improve access to care and changes. The most important thing is that it's brought three jurisdictions around the table, which is chaired by first nations; so the head of the first nations health authority actually sits there with the provincial government and the federal representatives, and the first nations make decisions around what are their priorities in e-health.

Health committee  We talked about being a country of pilot projects. I'd like to add, from the first nations health system, that this sparked the nation to change. Without the pilot projects in the last 10 years, we wouldn't have had the clinicians and the health managers actually seeing the benefits of e-health.