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Canadian group seeks $17.8B more for e-health
BY Bob Brewin
Published on May 2, 2006 VICTORIA, British Columbia -- Richard Alvarez, chief executive officer of Canada Health Infoway, the federally funded nonprofit corporation spearheading e-health in Canada, wants the federal government to allocate $8.9 billion in capital funds for health care information technology projects in the next decade. He also wants an equal investment from the country's territories and provinces. Alvarez, speaking here at the Canada e-Health 2006 Conference, said these investments would ensure deployment of health care IT systems, including patient registries, electronic health records and filmless radiography systems throughout the country. We need to keep [health IT investments] going, Alvarez said in an interview.
Infoway has come close to using up its initial federal funding of just more than $1 billion, with $650 million spent on 163 active provincial and regional health IT projects as of March, Alvarez said. The organization plans to spend another $268 million in the next year, Alvarez said, putting its gas tank close to empty.
Local governments initially matched Infoway funding grants to provinces, regions or localities, but Alvarez said the organization recently increased its share of the pot to 75 percent, which put additional strain on its budget.
He urged the federal government to move beyond good intentions in its backing of health IT projects and work with the provinces and territories to come up with the investment needed to make nationwide health IT systems a reality within a decade.
Infoway's current round of investments has helped jump-start health IT projects nationwide, Alvarez said, including the development of almost completely filmless radiography in Nova Scotia, an increase in the number of telehealth sites in Manitoba from 26 to 43, the allocation of an extra $268 million in funds from the Ministry of Health and development of a nationwide public heath disease surveillance system in the next 18 months.
Infoway, much like the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT in the United States, has backed a standards-based approach to health IT systems, and Alvarez used his talk to send a sharp message to vendors at the conference.
Vendors need to abandon their incompatible systems which cannot interoperate with systems from other companies, or they are not selling [products] in Canada, Alvarez said.
This means vendors need to adhere to health IT standards, primarily those established by the international Health Level 7 group, which sets standards for electronic interchange of clinical, financial and administrative information for health care organizations, Alvarez said in an interview.
Infoway is close to establishing a standard medical vocabulary, Alvarez said, with an agreement to use nationally the Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine (SNOMED) Clinical Terms, a database of 344,000 terms developed by the College of American Pathologists. He added that Canada is working with the United Kingdom on an international effort to acquire SNOMED rights.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services acquired SNOMED rights in 2003 and makes it available for free through the National Library of Medicine. The Food and Drug Administration said last month it will use SNOMED terminology as the basic building blocks of electronic drug labels.
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Remember those are Canadian Dollars
Live mid-market rates as of 2006.05.04 04:52:02 UTC.
1.00 CAD Canada Dollars = 1.17473 AUD Australia Dollars
1 CAD = 1.17473 AUD 1 AUD = 0.851257 CAD
I wonder how much we will see in the Budget Next Week?
Cheers
David
---- Dr David G More MB, PhD, FACHI Phone +61-2-9438-2851 Fax +61-2-9906-7038 Skype Username : davidgmore E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] |
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