Building the eHealth Edifice from the Second Story Down?

Dominic Covvey, (FACMI, FHIMSS), Professor, School of Optometry and Department of Biology and Founding Director, Waterloo Institute for Health Informatics Research, University of Waterloo

Wednesday, February 11, 2009
12:00 - 1:00PM
Davis Centre 1302, University of Waterloo

View Video of Presentation in HI Alive Archive: Research Seminars Archive 2008-2009

Abstract

Canada Health Infoway (Infoway) and provincial ehealth organizations have invested about several billion dollars in putting in place the architectural components of a womb-to-tomb Electronic Health Record (EHR) for Canadians. Recently Infoway’s funding was extended by another $500 million. The lion’s share of this funding has gone into developing various national registries, repositories and other systems, as well as contributing to funding for provincial projects such as Ontario’s Laboratories Information System (OLIS) and regional implementations of Picture Archiving and Communications Systems (PACS). We have called these “superstructural” projects, in that they are dependent on data from feeder systems in hospitals, healthcare providers’ practices, and other health organizations, which we call “infrastructural” systems. We became concerned regarding the state of these infrastructural systems, and worked with the Ontario Hospital Association for 3 years to survey the state of these infrastructural systems in Ontario hospitals.

We will present the data from these studies and share our conclusions relating to matters such as the need for adequate infrastructure, the cost of putting in place adequate systems, data and technical standards, and the need for competent personnel. Are we building an eHealth edifice without a foundation?

About the Speaker

Dominic Covvey is a Professor and the Founding Director of the Waterloo Institute for Health Informatics Research (WIHIR) at the University of Waterloo and of the National Institutes of Health Informatics (NIHI) that brings together universities and colleges to collaborate on Health Informatics Education and Research. His research is in the representation and analysis of healthcare workflow, the definition of competencies and curricula in Health Informatics and the design of the Electronic Health Record. Dominic is a Fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics and of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society, a senior member of the IEEE, and a certified Information Systems Professional.