Canada and US Accelerate Adoption of Electronic Health Records

For some time now, technologies for managing health records electronically have been available to the medical community, on the assumption that electronic health records (EHR) lower overall health costs and improve patient care. Over the past decade, many standards and competing technologies have been developed, with some gaining widespread use in hospitals and large institutions. However, the use of EHR has not been universally adopted, especially beyond large institutions, because of the cost and complexity of implementation. The $20 billion earmarked in the US government stimulus package for health care information technology includes incentives of $40,000 per physician for the adoption of electronic health records. These incentives have created quite a stir in the world of EHR, and should lead to wider adoption. As one example in the US, it is reported that a group of large companies, including Walmart, Dell and eClinicalWorks, is offering lower-cost electronic health record technologies aimed at US physicians in small practices. The services will be provided using an "application service provider" model, with data being stored and processed remotely. Canada has supported the adoption of EHR through Canada Health Infoway, a not-for-profit organization funded by the federal government, and in the recent Economic Action Plan, Health Canada announced that the Government has committed additional funding to support this initiative. In contrast to the US private sector development, in Canada, both the standards and the technologies used will be approved and mandated by Canada Health Infoway. A factor to be considered carefully with such initiatives is the high level of technological and legal safeguards needed for the transfer and storage of sensitive health information. For recent news stories, see: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123785277722019609.html; and http://tinyurl.com/cnq22l For a recent press release from Health Canada visit: http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/ahc-asc/media/nr-cp/_2009/2009_14-eng.php For the web site of Canada Health Infoway, visit: http://www.infoway-inforoute.ca/lang-en Summary by: James Kosa