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Who is Canada Health Infoway?

Canada Health Infoway   was created in a collaborative effort by the federal, provincial, and territorial governments with the goal of accelerating the development and adoption of electronic health records in Canada.

Today Infoway acts as your national agency to mobilize provinces, territories and vendors around modernizing our health system with standardized, data-informed digital tools.

To do this, Infoway is taking on four complementary roles:

01

Digital Health Convenor

As an established leader in Canada’s digital health agenda with experience convening key stakeholders across the nation, Infoway is positioned to operate as an Interoperability Centre of Excellence. This will incorporate global trends and best practices, convene key stakeholders at the right time during the right intersections of system modernization, and play an active role in pan-Canadian regulation and standards harmonization as we drive towards a more connected system with the patient at its heart.

02

Strategic Investor

Infoway can identify digital health solutions that bring national system value, expediting the implementation process through strategic vendor funding and mobilization at local levels with the ability to scale for pan-Canadian adoption.

03

Ecosystem Orchestrator

Our relationships across jurisdictions, public and private sectors, and with patients, clinicians, and government allow us to lay the foundation for connected care in Canada through digital health transformation. Specifically, we are driving national data connectivity and interoperability, accelerating implementation of standards and equitable use, coordinating strategic partners around development and adoption, and laying the foundation for standardization and innovation in digital health.

04

Digital Health Program Scaler

In scaling digital medication and e-prescribing nationally but remaining cognizant of jurisdiction individuality, Infoway is transitioning PrescribeIT® to become self-sustainable while still leveraging e-prescribing data for holistic data exchange and in the advancement of Canadian interoperability.

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The Path to
Connected Care

How interoperability will improve health system outcomes and quality of care.
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Imagine a health care system that is
fully connected

Where patient information can travel quickly and securely...

Between
Specialists
Family doctors
Specialists
Family Doctors
Hospitals
Between
Hospitals
Clinics
Care homes
Clinics
Care Homes

Where information can travel across provinces...

And Between
Your doctor
Your Doctor
You
And You.

Imagine a health care system where...

patients can walk into any clinic and have access to their full medical history

Patient standing by the reception desk

Where patients living with multiple chronic conditions have a health care team sharing treatment information in real-time

Doctors connected

And where providers aren’t overburdened with administrative tasks and instead focused on delivering the quality of care all Canadians deserve.

Doctor and patient

That system is possible. It can exist today.
And it starts with Interoperability.

What is
interoperability?

Interoperability is the ability for different digital healthcare information systems across provinces, territories and care settings to “speak the same language” and have information to flow seamlessly between different solutions and devices. It will:

Allow patients to access their electronic health records from secure platforms

Enable health care providers across all settings to exchange patients’ health information electronically and securely

This is what it means to have Connected Care. Ensuring seamless collaboration, enhancing patient-centered care, and contributing to a more efficient and responsive healthcare system for all Canadians. It sounds pretty simple. But it's not.

To have a truly connected system that puts patients first, we need:

Patient information that is accessible to authorized care providers (ie. hospitals, clinics, doctor’s offices, etc.)

Use of common language, based on universally accepted pan-Canadian terminology and standards, by health care providers to share information on patient care plans and treatments that consider differences in clinical workflows across provinces, territories, and facilities

An organization to regulate and standardize health information as it evolves

Work is already underway to bring this vision to life, and while there is still much to be done... it's worth it. The benefit for patients of a truly connected system are numerous…

The benefit for patients of a truly connected system are numerous…

Why
connected care
matters

Connected Care will modernize how health information is securely accessed by patients and their care teams to treat faster, intervene sooner, and sustain our workforce for longer.

01

Improved Access to, and Quality of, Care

01. Improved Access to, and Quality of, Care

Reduce the time to, and between, diagnosis and treatment for patients by ensuring care providers can follow their treatment journey through various care settings and stages of care.

Improve patient outcomes and experience through collaborative and inclusive communication across teams as well as better patient adherence to courses of treatment through access to personal health and medication records.

Enable patients to seek out treatment when and where they need it by ensuring care teams across settings and locations have access to complete and universally-understood patient records.

84
%

84% of patients have said they can better manage their health when they’ve had access to their personal health information.

92
%

92% of clinicians agree…that improved Connected Care would enable safer patient care by having more complete, timely and accurate information at their disposal.

02

Prevent Burnout of Human Health Resources

02. Prevent Burnout of Human Health Resources

One of the leading factors of burnout comes from the administrative burden placed on health care providers using siloed, antiquated or incompatible systems.

Connected Care can help reduce the administrative burden placed on health care providers by ensuring health information and patient care records are up-to-date, easily understood and transmitted seamlessly online.

This ensures our health care providers are doing what they do best: providing quality care to patients.

03

Cost Savings

03. Cost Savings

Connected Care also has the potential to achieve significant cost savings for our health care system.

These savings will benefit patients by allowing provinces to focus funding on programs that impact care instead of antiquated administration tools.

$694M in potential savings from patients accessing a comprehensive health record.

$
694
M

$950M in potential savings to the health system through widespread use of the patient summary.

$
950
M

5.6M hours of potential patient time saved...and a collective 2.3M hours of potential clinician time saved through patients accessing a comprehensive health record and widespread use of the patient summary.

5.6
Mhrs

OK. So. Interoperability is Good. But...

How do we
get there?

On February 7, 2023, the Government of Canada announced an investment of $196.1 billion over 10 years, including $46.2 billion in new funding for provinces and territories to improve health care services for Canadians.

$
196.1
B

This funding and meaningful collaboration with jurisdictions and health care partners across our system have informed the four strategic priorities that will enable Connected Care:

Reducing Data Blocking and Easing Portability

Improving Provider Access to Patient Data at Point-of-Care

Enabling Patient Access to their Health Record

Improving Care Coordination and Collaboration

…And Canada Health Infoway, in partnership with the Government of Canada, the provinces and territories, and Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) has developed the pan-Canadian Interoperability Roadmap to get us there. It outlines the importance of:

01

A primary care data set that aims to standardize the classes and designations of patient information inputs to ensure patient data can be easily transmitted across care settings

02

The Pan-Canadian Patient Summary that would lean on the primary care data set and be available to all care providers to ease portability of patient and treatment information

03

Improved patient access to their personal health information and records

04

Electronic eReferral and eConsult solutions that streamline the process for patients to access care and providers to collaborate with their peers

Each of these initiatives are being developed in collaboration with health care partners from across the system, considering and being tested against existing clinical workflows to identify and remove roadblocks before they will be progressively scaled towards national adoption.

And once there, Connected Care will:

Patient accessing health records

Empower patients by giving them access to their health records

01
02

Make it easier for patients to receive the care they need, when and where they need it

Help reduce clinician burnout and health services backlogs

03
04

Enable us to make more proactive decisions

Reinforce the trust between Canadians and their health care system

05

To learn more about interoperability, download the Share Pan-Canadian Interoperability Roadmap   today.