INSIDE:
Continuus Health
Hamilton Health Sciences and McMaster University’s virtual care service has now been renamed Continuus Health. After several years of refinements and success, the team hopes to extend its methodology to other centres across Canada.
Page 4
Tele-monitoring BP
Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute has identified the benefits of a novel home blood pressure telemonitoring intervention to prevent hypertension from worsening.
Page 6
AI scribes
AI scribes have become the talk of the medical community today – one of the first effective tools to reduce the crushing administrative load that’s been placed on physicians.
Page 8
Sunnybrook at
the forefront of focused ultrasound
Dr. Kullervo Hynynen, VP of research and innovation at Sunnybrook Research Institute and his colleagues have advanced the use of focused ultrasound (FUS), which can open the blood-brain barrier to deliver numerous agents to the brain. The system previously required the use of MRI scanners, but the team has now created a helmet that operates outside the MRI, making FUS more accessible. SEE STORY ON PAGE 10.
Toronto Grace emerges as virtual care powerhouse
BY JERRY ZEIDENBERG
The Toronto Grace Health Centre, an urban hospital specializing in complex, continuing care and post-surgical rehab, has large ambitions when it comes to telehealth.
The organization has built an effective remote patient monitoring system – a combination of skilled staff and specialized technology – that’s currently keeping tabs on the health of 16,000 clients across Ontario.
By the end of 2024, those figures are expected to reach between 25,000 and 30,000.
“The numbers are growing by 1,000 referrals each month,” said Toronto Grace’s president and CEO, Jake Tran.
“We’ve scaled up and we’re working as far
north as Thunder Bay, as west as London, and as far east as Ottawa.”
Moreover, the hospital began monitoring out-of-province patients in British Columbia in June and as of September, it started providing virtual care in Prince Edward Island. It’s
Toronto Grace is monitoring patients across Ontario, and has branched into BC and PEI.
all a testament to the effective approach created by the hospital and Tran’s vision of what could be accomplished through virtual care.
“The goal is to eliminate the term ALC,” said Tran.
Alternate Level of Care (ALC) patients are
hospital patients that are largely stable, but who require special attention in nursing homes or assisted living facilities. They’ve been unable to leave hospital because spots are unavailable in these continuing care centres.
However, with remote monitoring from Toronto Grace, they’re able to return home. That’s freeing up beds in hospitals and allowing sicker patients to get the attention they need.
Since starting their Remote Care Monitoring program, about 25,000 patients have been enabled to return home from hospital, many of whom were pre-ALC or ALC patients.
The success of the program has led Ontario Health to ask Toronto Grace to keep growing. For his part, Tran is now asking the
provincial government for additional support to expand and sustain the project across Ontario.
“It makes great financial sense for the government, as well as for us,” said Tran. “A transitional bed in hospital costs $500 a day. We can do home monitoring for $10 a day.”
The patients being monitored at home are largely older adults living with frailty, and they’re at risk of falls and wandering. They’re also living with chronic diseases, such as COPD, heart failure and diabetes, and some have dementia, said Danielle Kilby-Lechman, manager of Toronto Grace’s Remote Care Monitoring program.
On the innovation front, the hospital has developed a system with its technology partner, GRTHealth, of Aurora, Ont., that has enabled a team at the hospital to continuously monitor these patients.
The home-based technology includes a pendant worn by patients that detects falls and provides voice communication. It has an SOS button, enabling the patient to obtain help, when needed.
Toronto Grace Health Centre emerges as a virtual care powerhouse Advancing Connected Care at the 2024 Partnership Conference
Passive sensors in the home can tell the team if the patient isn’t moving about in a normal way and needs to be checked on.
There’s also geofencing – sensors that detect if the patient goes out the door when it’s unexpected.
And a medication dispensing machine is connected to the command centre. It lets the team know if the client isn’t taking their meds.
Finally, there’s a set of devices for measuring vital signs – weight, blood pressure, blood oxygen and temperature. The equipment connects to a tablet computer in the home, which in turn sends data to the command centre.
“It’s all automated,” said Kilby-Lechman. “The client just has to use the device.”
If there’s ever a problem, the team can quickly contact a doctor for an opinion, and visiting nurses and PSWs, paramedics or even the police can be quickly alerted if in-person help is needed.
“We have people monitoring day and night,” she said. They’re watching for alarms, and they can instantly contact the patient using the two-way calling on the pendants worn by patients. They can also
escalate the calls, when additional help is needed,” said Kilby-Lechman.
The command centre is run by PSWs with training in geriatrics. Other members of the Remote Care Monitoring team include clinicians, administrators, and installers.
Nov. 18-19, 2024 Westin Ottawa
Join industry experts and digital health leaders to drive interoperability and help chart the path for a healthier system and a healthier Canada.
Learn more and register to secure your discounted rate!
Address all correspondence to Canadian Healthcare Technology, 1118 Centre Street, Suite 204, Thornhill ON L4J 7R9 Canada. Telephone: (905) 709-2330. Fax: (905) 709-2258. Internet: www.canhealth.com. E-mail: info2@canhealth.com. Canadian Healthcare Technology will publish eight issues in 2024. Feature schedule and advertising kits available upon request. Canadian Healthcare Technology is sent free of charge to physicians and managers in hospitals, clinics and nursing homes. All others: $67.80 per year ($60 + $7.80 HST). Registration number 899059430 RT. ©2024 by Canadian Healthcare Technology. The content of Canadian Healthcare Technology is subject to copyright. Reproduction in whole or in part without prior written permission is strictly prohibited. Send all requests for permission to Jerry Zeidenberg, Publisher. Publications Mail Agreement No. 40018238. Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to Canadian Healthcare Technology, 1118 Centre Street, Suite 204, Thornhill ON L4J 7R9. E-mail: jerryz@canhealth.com. ISSN 1486-7133
Publisher & Editor
Jerry Zeidenberg jerryz@canhealth.com
Office Manager
Neil Zeidenberg neilz@canhealth.com
They’ve been successfully helping the patients return to health, or stay stable in the comfort of their homes, instead of in hospital wards.
For that reason, the two other provinces have asked Toronto Grace to monitor patients in their jurisdictions, enabling them, too, to move more patients from hospital to home and to free up beds.
Tran noted that Toronto Grace is now monitoring patients in British Columbia in a pilot project with Kin Village. It has also started providing remote monitoring for Prince Edward Island. With ultra-fast communication networks, all the monitoring can be done from Toronto.
The nurses and PSWs staffing the command centre in Toronto are set up to contact the right people in BC and PEI if needed.
In the future, Toronto Grace plans to add a rehab-at-home component to its program.
It’s also testing AI. “We’re analyzing the level of activity of clients and predicting possible declines, so we can intervene more quickly,” said Tran.
“We’re also working on the problem of social isolation,” said Tran. On this front, Toronto Grace has been developing a toylike dog that’s capable of holding conversations with clients. “It works, but it’s a little ugly-looking right now,” said Tran. “It needs to look better before we use it.”
Another application will deploy AI to detect shortness of breath in the speech patterns of clients as a way of spotting COPD.
Technological innovations are enabling it all to happen, but in the end, it’s a safety net of people – all skilled professionals –who are monitoring the patients and caring for them. At the same time, Tran observed that’s it’s a cost-effective solution, as the Remote Care Monitoring program cares for patients at a fraction of the cost of hospitalization.
Contributing Editors
Dianne Craig dcraigcreative@yahoo.ca
Dianne Daniel dianne.l.daniel@gmail.com
Dr. Sunny Malhotra Twitter: @drsunnymalhotra
Norm Tollinsky tollinskyn@gmail.com
Art Director
Walter Caniparoli art@canhealth.com
Art Assistant Joanne Jubas joanne@canhealth.com
Jake Tran, CEO and Danielle Kilby-Lechman, manager, remote care monitoring, at Toronto Grace.
Meet Canon’s newest CT with INSTINX Workflow
With its powerful CT performance and redesigned workflow, Aquilion Serve SP is valuable to clinical teams looking to reduce scan times, simplify training and drive faster throughput with consistent results. Canon Medical develops meaningful innovations as healthcare needs evolve with the patient in mind. Read this whitepaper to learn more >>
Virtual care service aspires to expand its know-how across Canada
BY JERRY ZEIDENBERG
HAMILTON, ONT. – By combining clinical care with research, the virtual care program at Hamilton Health Sciences and McMaster University – now called Continuus Health – has been able to reduce the length-of-stay of certain groups of hospital patients by two days.
It does this by safely transferring patients home earlier than before and monitoring them with a combination of technology, including an easy-to-use tablet computer and devices to measure blood pressure, heart rate, respiratory rate, oxygen saturation, temperature and weight.
If patients have questions and concerns, they can communicate with nurses through the tablet.
The Continuus Health program has also helped keep those patients from returning to hospital, too, an important measure of its effectiveness. By providing ample care in the home, it has reduced readmission rates by 40 percent.
Under the scientific leadership of Drs. PJ Devereaux, Michael McGillion and Mark Levine and the operational leadership of Jennifer Lounsbury, the program has been able to transition from research trials to clinical practice in a seamless way.
“Our approach is based on six years of research and clinical practice,” said Dr. Ted Scott, VP of innovation and partnerships at Hamilton Health Sciences. “The program now runs so smoothly. We are delighted with the improved efficiency, clinical outcomes and most importantly, the enhanced connection between patients and providers.”
Continuus Health first emerged in 2016 and focused on post-op cardiac patients.
When COVID-19 struck, in 2020, it became increasingly important to keep patients in hospital for as little time as possible and the virtual care program expanded its scope and volume of patients.
At the same time, Continuus Health refined its procedures for caring for discharged hospital patients at home.
IAs Dr. Scott notes, the program “is a leading-edge model of care that provides patients with a continuous connection to specialized care teams after they leave the hospital. It’s a dynamic model that combines scientific research, healthcare operations and real-time data analysis to continually evolve and enhance the effectiveness of care patients receive outside a hospital setting.”
Significantly, Continuus Health now hopes to take that time-tested approach and deploy it at other sites across Canada, so that more patients, clinicians and researchers can benefit from these learnings.
It’s currently seeking funding to extend its methodology to remote care and other research centres in Alberta, Ottawa and Nova Scotia.
Dr. Scott notes that many centres across Canada deliver virtual care to patients, but there are many different approaches. Most of them are uninformed by research and haven’t established best practices.
“Virtual care is a challenging area for hospital providers,” he noted. “Many do it, but they don’t have a structured approach to delivery or evaluation.”
Continuus Health hopes to transfer
that knowledge, enabling others to benefit from it.
For its part, Continuus Health has delivered remote care to over 2,400 patients from its start to March 2024. During that time, the nurses staffing the lab have completed more than 72,000 interventions, providing assistance to patients in areas such as wound management, psychosocial support and pain management.
They’ve also ordered tests and changed drug doses.
There have been 8,591 escalations from nurses to physicians and from physicians to surgeons. Moreover, remote care is delivered around the clock, seven days a week.
Something Continuus Health has led the way on is providing ‘accommodated’
working nurses, who are unable to continue working at the bedside, with meaningful employment at its virtual care lab. Those nurses have brought a high level of skills to the lab.
Currently, six registered nurses and four registered practical nurses are working within the Continuus Health lab facility. “In light of the human resources shortage in healthcare, this has been a real opportunity to retain talent,” said Dr. Michael McGillion, assistant dean of research at McMaster University’s School of Nursing. “It’s an exciting part of this project.”
Much has been learned about operating the lab in the best way possible. “So, the idea is to hopefully expand our virtual care infrastructure across some partner sites, now that we’ve learned how to organize an effective physical environment to provide remote care,” he said.
Among the things that Continuus Health has learned is that it’s best to have clinicians working together at a physical site, and not remotely. In this way, it’s much easier to collaborate on problems and issues that come up, and to share ideas.
“When staff work in isolation, it’s less effective,” said Dr. McGillion. He noted that by working as a group, it’s easier to do virtual patient rounds each morning and rounds with physicians at mid-day. “It also builds a culture of success and clinical competence,” he added.
Dr. McGillion said the Continuus Health lab makes use of command centre principles, in terms of monitoring. There are six nurse stations with a clear view of a patient status grid offering real-time data about patients being monitored from home. Previously the Continuus Health lab has focused on post-surgical care. Its now expanding its scope by working with cancer patients receiving treatments such as chemotherapy, radiation, and immunotherapy as outpatients.
Virtual care and remote monitoring will improve patient support while oncology patients go through treatment, enhancing the patient and family experience.
How Alberta Health Services is transforming healthcare operations
n the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, the healthcare system faced unprecedented challenges.
At Alberta Health Services (AHS), one of the largest integrated provincial health systems in Canada, the stakes were particularly high. Responsible for the health of 4.7 million Albertans and employing 127,000 staff, AHS needed innovative solutions to maintain operational efficiency while addressing the surge in demand. Enter Jesse Tutt, program director of the Intelligent Automation team at AHS and his team of automation warriors who are improving healthcare delivery using Intelligent Automation (IA).
Earlier this year, AHS was honoured in New York City with the prestigious SS&C Blue Prism Legend Award, a testament to
their groundbreaking work in IA which is the use of analytics, artificial intelligence and process automation (also known as Triple A) to automate manual tasks.
The award, often likened to a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, recognizes organizations that are true agents of change. For AHS, the journey began with a timely recommendation from EY, a consulting partner who identified “robotic process automation” as a key strategy to enhance efficiency and reduce costs. “The early days of the pandemic were incredibly demanding,” said Tutt. “AHS needed to hire thousands of new staff quickly to meet the rising clinical demand. Our first digital workers were designed to help out by automating administrative tasks in the HR department including sending out offer letters, can-
cellation letters, regret letters and processing position changes.”
In the early days, the AHS Automation program knew how important building a robust foundation is for IA teams since most teams could reallocate their staff to
AHS and a team of ‘automation warriors’ aim to improve healthcare delivery through the use of Intelligent Automation.
more urgent and meaningful tasks once automations are put into production.
As a result, storage, server, data center and city resilient technology was implemented and the team designed a rigid process which was audited by SS&C Ad-
visory Services, EY, and internal audit. This foundation ensured that the automations were scalable and sustainable.
Central to the program’s success was the establishment of the Automation Steering & Oversight Committee (ASOC). This body provides governance and oversight, with each business department appointing an “Automation Champion”. These champions act as advocates within their own department identifying automation opportunities and working closely with department leaders to prioritize them.
The principles guiding AHS’s automation journey are straightforward yet profound:
•Bias toward action: Deliver value swiftly and with a sense of urgency. Within six
Drs. McGillion, Levine and Devereaux above, at new space opening, with Dr. Ted Scott at the podium.
Enterprise Imaging Cloud
Tele-monitoring of blood pressure succeeds in reducing hypertension
VANCOUVER – With rates of hypertension on the rise in B.C., research led by experts at the Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute (VCHRI) has identified the benefits of a novel home blood pressure telemonitoring (HBPT) intervention to prevent hypertension from worsening. It’s also helping people with the condition take control of their health.
“Elevated blood pressure is a silent killer,” said Dr. Kendall Ho, co-lead of the HBPT study published in JMIR Formative Research. “The consequences of having undiagnosed elevated blood pressure are stroke, heart attack and kidney failure, among others, many of which can lead to irreversible consequences, including death.”
“Right now, people may be told in hospital that their blood pressure is high and asked to visit their family physician to follow up regarding treatment. But, the problem is that many people do not have a family physician,” Dr. Ho added. “Other patients might not understand the gravity of the situation and may decide not to pursue treatment as a result.”
Asymptomatic elevated blood pressure is a common occurrence, with many people unaware that they have the condition. The population most affected in Canada is postmenopausal women, as well as men in their 30s and 40s, said Dr. Karen Tran, an HBPT study co-lead and VCHRI researcher.
“We see more patients present to the Hypertension Clinic at Vancouver General Hospital (VGH) with uncontrolled high blood pressure now compared to 10 years ago,” Dr. Tran continued.
Researchers encourage people to monitor their blood pressure at home, as a way of controlling and taking charge of this problem.
Also known as the Telehealth for Emergency-Community Continuity of Care Connectivity via Home-Telemonitoring Blood Pressure (TEC4Home-BP), the HBPT pilot study forms part of a larger body of research to improve hypertension management in a convenient and accessible manner for patients.
The study team recruited 46 multi-ethnic participants discharged from the emergency department with asymptomatic elevated blood pressure. Participants had a systolic blood pressure of over or equal to 160 millimetres of mercury (mm Hg) or a diastolic blood pressure of over or equal to 100 mm Hg.
In comparison, a healthy reading for systolic blood pressure – the pressure exerted against the artery walls during a heartbeat – is less than 130 mm Hg, according to the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada. A low-risk reading for di-
astolic blood pressure – the reading when blood presses against artery walls between heartbeats – is less than 80 mm Hg.
HBPT equipped participants with wearable blood pressure telemonitoring and measurement cuffs with wireless data transfer capabilities via a Bluetooth connection. When participants used the cuffs to measure their blood pressure, data was sent wirelessly via an app on their smartphones installed with help by the research team. The Sphygmo app was used by participants to complete and share their blood pressure readings with the research team twice daily: once in the morning and evening for three months.
Participants were also assessed either in person or over the phone by the team at the Hypertension Clinic at VGH, where they received advice on how to manage their hypertension. Participants with uncontrolled elevated blood pressure were
contacted by a clinician to discuss treatment or lifestyle interventions.
By the end of the study, 71.4 percent of participants had reduced their systolic blood pressure to safe levels and 85.7 percent had controlled their diastolic blood pressure. This resulted in a mean 13 mm Hg reduction in systolic blood pressure and a five mm Hg reduction in diastolic blood pressure.
Researchers also noted that 76 percent of participants were highly satisfied with the HBPT program and 76 percent found the digital health tools incorporated in the study easy to use.
One study participant shared that the “program allows me to monitor my own health and gives me comfort knowing there are healthcare professionals watching over me. Also, this program provides very timely information if a change in medication is required.”
They added, “I now understand that my blood pressure changes often and I am beginning to understand what activities affect it.”
Dr. Tran and Dr. Ho both encourage everyone to regularly measure their blood pressure at home using a validated home blood pressure cuff. For those with high readings, they recommend consulting a health professional right away and taking steps to reduce their blood pressure.
“We believe that empowering people to take control of their health, potentially with support from programs like HBPT, is one approach that can help combat the rise in uncontrolled hypertension,” said Dr. Tran, who has plans in place to conduct a multi-centre clinical trial to improve blood pressure management in an emergency context.
Data storytelling and dashboards: Narrating the impact of virtual health
In recent years, the adoption of virtual health has significantly increased among British Columbians, and it’s easy to see why. It provides improved access to healthcare, reduces travel time and expenses, and enhances patient empowerment.
“Since the onset of the pandemic, the province has recorded close to 3 million virtual health visits on various provincial platforms. This surge in usage underscores the growing reliance on, and trust in, virtual health services across British Columbia,” said Neel Majumder, senior leader, Virtual Health Analytics & Evaluation, Provincial Digital Solutions, PHSA.
The Provincial Virtual Health (PVH) department of BC’s Provincial Health Services Authority (PHSA) has been actively collaborating with various teams across the health sector to implement initiatives that bring virtual care to individuals. These efforts are in line with the Ministry of Health’s vision of creating a digitally enabled health system that is trusted by all users.
As Amir Rasheed, senior director of Provincial Digital Solutions, notes, “We
regularly track virtual health activities across the province. The data we collect and analyze not only helps us assess our performance but also tells the story of how virtual health is making a difference for those who use it.”
Data storytelling has emerged as a crucial tool in healthcare analytics, particularly in visualizing the effectiveness of virtual health interventions. The virtual health analytics team at PHSA’s Provincial Virtual Health (PVH) and Provincial Digital Solution (PDS) has embraced this approach to vividly demonstrate the impact of various virtual health platforms across British Columbia.
Using data storytelling, the team has shown how technologies such as Zoom for Healthcare, BC Virtual Visit (BCVV)/Teladoc, Video Remote Interpreting, and Remote Patient Monitoring are transforming healthcare delivery.
The Problem: Despite producing a wide array of reports and dashboards, our team encountered low adoption and engagement from partners and programs. The complexity of virtual health data and the lack of contextual storytelling meant that the insights pro-
vided were often overlooked.
Additionally with the surge of virtual care products and solutions, the data analytics team had access to a wide range of data sources and increasing data volumes. It became a challenge to rapidly produce consistent insights for the product teams and clinical sponsors.
This prompted a critical need to shift the approach, emphasizing data narra-
The data storytelling approach is focused on success metrics like usability, user experience and operational efficiency.
tives that articulate the real-world application and benefits of metrics. By doing so, we aimed to early enhance stakeholder engagement and support more informed decision-making.
Approach: In our approach to data storytelling for virtual health products, we focused on identifying critical success metrics like usability, user experience, and operational efficiency through stakeholder collaboration.
While redesigning our analytics platform, we consulted best practices in effective data storytelling to bridge the gap between data and end-users, ensuring our platform is both user-centric and outcome-focused. We organized data into six key dimensions in alignment with the BC Digital Health Strategy –ranging from synchronous communications to care coordination – and optimized our analytics platform using platforms like MS Azure and MS Power BI.
Our method involved iterative improvements and integrating continuous end user feedback, ensuring our analytics platform remains dynamic and responsive to emerging data and insights.
Results and findings: The transformation led to the successful implementation of our Virtual Health Analytics Platform, driving substantial enhancements in user engagement and improved decision-making through accessible and actionable insights.
By incorporating best practices in data storytelling, our platform significantly influences product evaluations and the scaling of virtual
Dr. Kendall Ho and Dr. Karen Tran are co-leaders of the home blood pressure telemonitoring study.
Body MRI for SIGNA™
Advanced imaging techniques for robust breast MR imaging
Breast MR exam | Wing to wing solution
A robust comprehensive MR solution with AIR™ Recon DL that adheres to BI-RADS® guidelines
Personalized
Improve patient comfort and experience with the flexibility of AIR™
Fast & quantifiable imaging with AIR™ Recon DL Push the limits on SNR & sharpness with 50% less scan
Quantifiable & automated reporting Accuracy meets time saving demands for BI-RADS breast analysis
Navigating the world of AI scribes, the clinician’s new best friend
BY MAHSHID YASSAEI
It’s been quite a journey since that fateful day over a year ago when a handful of pioneering Canadian clinicians first dipped their toes into the world of AI Scribes. Their eyes widened with wonder as they witnessed the potential of this groundbreaking technology unfold before them. Fast forward to today, and AI Scribes have become the talk of the medical community, promising to revolutionize the way we handle clinical documentation.
As the CEO of Tali AI, I’ve had the privilege of witnessing this transformation firsthand. Our team has been at the forefront of developing a cutting-edge AI Scribe solution, and we’ve seen the incredible impact it can have on streamlining workflows and improving patient care.
But with so many options now flooding the market, how do you, as a clinician, navigate this brave new world and find the perfect AI Scribe for your practice? Let’s embark on this journey together and explore the key considerations for making an informed decision.
The AI scribe revolution: More than just dictation: At its core, an AI Scribe is your digital ally in the battle against paperwork. But to truly understand its potential, we need to move beyond the simple concept of dictation software. Modern AI Scribes are sophisticated systems that can:
•Analyze conversations in real-time
•Extract relevant medical information
•Structure data according to standard medical formats
•Integrate seamlessly with existing healthcare IT infrastructure
The result? A comprehensive, accurate, and instantly available medical record that
frees you to focus on what matters most –your patients.
The five pillars of AI Scribe excellence: When evaluating AI Scribe solutions, consider these five crucial aspects:
•Intelligent Comprehension. The cornerstone of any effective AI Scribe is its ability to understand and interpret medical conversations accurately. Look for systems that boast: Advanced natural language processing capabilities; Adaptive learning to improve accuracy over time; Ability to handle multiple accents and speaking styles; Robust medical vocabulary, including rare conditions and cutting-edge treatments.
•Workflow integration. The best AI Scribe should feel like a natural extension of your existing workflow, not a disruptive force. Key features to consider include:
Compatibility with your current Electronic Medical Record (EMR) system; Support for various clinical scenarios (e.g., initial consultations, follow-ups, emergency situations); Ability to generate different types of medical documents (progress notes, referral letters, discharge summaries); Customizable templates that align with your personal documentation style.
•Accessibility and flexibility. In today’s dynamic healthcare environment, your AI Scribe should be as mobile as you are. Prioritize solutions that offer: Cross-platform support (desktop, tablet, smartphone); Offline functionality for areas with poor internet connectivity; Cloud synchronization for seamless transitions between devices; Support for various input methods (voice, typing, touch).
•Privacy and security fortification. With
great power comes great responsibility, especially when it comes to handling sensitive patient information.
Ensure your chosen AI Scribe has: Endto-end encryption for all data transmissions; Compliance with relevant healthcare data protection regulations (e.g., HIPAA, PIPEDA); Regular security audits and penetration testing; Granular access controls and audit logs.
•Continuous improvement and support. The field of AI is evolving rapidly, and your AI Scribe should evolve with it.
Look for vendors that provide: Regular software updates and feature enhancements; A dedicated customer success team; Comprehensive training resources and onboarding support; An active user community for knowledge sharing and peer support.
Choosing your perfect match: When selecting an AI Scribe, consider your specific needs and practice environment. Are you a specialist who requires in-depth knowledge of a particular field? Or a general practitioner who needs broad coverage? Do you work in a bustling urban hospital or a rural clinic with limited internet connectivity?
Take advantage of free trials and demos to get a feel for different systems. Pay attention to the user interface, the accuracy of transcriptions, and how well it integrates with your existing workflows. Don’t hesitate to reach out to other clinicians who have implemented AI Scribes for their insights and experiences.
Remember, the goal isn’t just to find a tool that works – it’s to find a partner that will grow and evolve with your practice.
Mahshid Yassaei is the CEO of Tali AI. Please visit at tali.ai.
Transformation of forms to a digital process means better flow
BY AMANDA YU AND KRISTINA BELYEA
Paperwork and administrative tasks are part of delivering healthcare – but for the practitioners and support staff of one of the largest hospitals in Eastern Ontario, the burdens had grown beyond manageable. Hours spent filling out forms, faxing back and forth, and chasing down signatures and consent meant less time focusing on patient care.
Enter Auxita, a digital platform that integrates seamlessly with EHRs like Epic to help staff and HCPs manage workflows and paperwork easily and efficiently. Auxita’s innovative platform connects clinics, patients, insurance providers, and patient support programs (PSPs) to deliver care in a timely and streamlined manner, while managing the burden of paperwork digitally.
Mastering workflow: The traditional reliance on paper-based systems for managing patient information and consent forms is increasingly unsustainable and can create backlogs. Such methods are labor-intensive and error-prone and detract from the time that healthcare
professionals (HCPs) could otherwise spend with patients.
The lack of integrated Patient Support Program (PSP) enrolment forms for specialty medications within hospital systems compounds the challenges that hospitals face.
With Auxita, manual completion of outdated paper forms has become a thing of the past. Digitizing this process and providing advanced management tools has enabled this hospital’s 3,200 staff and HCPs to centralize and streamline patient information workflows. This digital shift has resulted in significant time savings and increased accuracy, allowing HCPs to focus on delivering high-quality care.
Efficiency and care: Patients who require specialty medications – such as biologics or biosimilars – will often need the services of a Patient Support Program (PSP). While PSPs themselves are invaluable to the patient, whose medical needs can be intense, the process of enrolment and capturing patient consent is time-consuming.
Auxita’s digital platform has made the process less cumbersome. By handling
all details of a patient’s information digitally, there is no paperwork that needs to be mailed or faxed out.
Whether in the hospital or from the comfort of their home, patients can receive and give consent on the Auxita platform, enabling a faster turnaround that can speed up the time it takes for a patient to get enrolled with a PSP and access to the care they need.
On the hospital staff side, Auxita’s seamless integration with Epic means
With Auxita, manual completion of outdated paper enrolment forms has become a thing of the past.
full visibility and notifications of forms that have been signed and completed. Admin staff do not need to chase down or make calls to patients or payors; the status of a patient’s PSP enrolment can be accessed at-a-glance from the Auxita dashboard, making it easy for anyone on staff to know where their patients are in the process.
And there is no more chasing down forms: Auxita’s platform houses all necessary forms from every manufacturer, ensuring HCPs have access to the most current copies for any specialty drug prescription.
The use of Auxita to manage the bureaucratic aspects of PSP enrolment has enabled faster access to care for patients and given hospital staff time back to focus on their patients. The mental load associated with administrative tasks has transformed into an opportunity for HCPs to build stronger relationships with patients and deliver even more meaningful care.
Flexible workflow integration: Flexible workflow integration is crucial as it will allow hospitals to tailor the system to their specific needs and processes, ensuring a seamless fit into their existing operations. Implementing this improves communication and collaboration by routing all enrolments to a single point of contact who collaborates closely with the relevant teams.
This adaptability is particularly beneficial in departments with complex workflows, such as gastroenterology and
North West Telepharmacy and FirstHx partner for remote BPMH solution
Hospitals across Canada face increasing challenges in ensuring the quality of care they provide, particularly when it comes to medication reconciliation. A key component of medication reconciliation is conducting a Best Possible Medication History (BPMH) to ensure a patient’s medication information is accurate.
After an effective BPMH, all decisions concerning medication used in hospital can then be made with the necessary information about what the patient was using prior to admission.
The whole medication reconciliation process has been a Required Organizational Practice (ROP) in Accreditation Canada’s standards for over a decade. However, many hospitals struggle to meet that standard.
North West Telepharmacy Solutions (NTS) now offers a virtual BPMH and medication reconciliation service that hospitals can subscribe to as they need it. This innovative program leverages remote pharmacy technicians and advanced software to improve the accuracy of medication reconciliation, instilling confidence in the system.
In small hospitals, where staffing is often limited, pharmacy personnel are not always available to conduct a BPMH. Additionally, recruiting registered pharmacy technicians to fill these gaps has proven difficult, especially in rural and remote areas of Ontario.
This shortage places a significant burden on emergency room (ER) nurses, who are often tasked with conducting BPMH on top of their already demanding roles; putting a complex and time-consuming extra responsibility on already busy nurses leads to frustration and less accurate results.
“Many hospitals simply don’t have the pharmacy personnel and certainly don’t have pharmacy staff available in the evening when many patients are being admitted. Leaving nurses with the additional responsibility to conduct a BPMH is an unrealistic expectation,” said Kevin McDonald, director at NTS. “Our program helps alleviate that burden while ensuring high-quality, standardized medication histories are still collected.”
NTS has responded to these challenges by creating a remote BPMH program that relies on pharmacy technicians employed directly by the company. These remote pharmacy technicians work with hospitals to conduct BPMH interviews via videoconferencing or phone calls.
This approach ensures that patients still receive the care and attention needed for accurate BPMH while freeing up ER nurses to focus on their primary duties. The flexibility in communication methods allows the program to adapt to the varying capabilities of the hospitals it serves.
“By having our remote pharmacy technicians conduct BPMH, we allow hospital staff to focus on their clinical roles, while we ensure accurate medication information is obtained,” explains Rebecca Lynch, NTS pharmacy technician supervisor.
One of the standout features of NTS’s BPMH program is its partnership with FirstHx, a software company that has codeveloped a tool specifically designed to streamline the BPMH process. The FirstHx tool, MedHx, is based on the ISMP Canada algorithm, ensuring that BPMH interviews are conducted in a standardized
manner, improving accuracy and reducing variability between interviews.
What sets the MedHx tool apart is its ability to prompt patient-specific questions during the BPMH interview. The tool starts with basic questions about the patient’s medications but dynamically adjusts the line of questioning based on the patient’s responses.
This ensures that important aspects such as allergies, smoking habits, alcohol use, and substance abuse are captured. Additionally, it can delve deeper into clinical questions related to specific disease states such as diabetes or congestive heart failure, a feature that is typically outside the scope of a standard BPMH interview conducted by a pharmacy technician.
“The MedHx tool is truly a gamechanger. It not only simplifies the BPMH
Düsseldorf, Germany 11–14 November 2024
Member of
PocketHealth makes access to diagnostic images free for patients
BY JERRY ZEIDENBERG
After working with hundreds of hospitals across North America to make the diagnostic images and reports of patients downloadable from a secure, private cloud, Torontobased PocketHealth has been adding features – including translating the reports into patient-friendly language and identifying follow-up recommendations.
For patients, access to their own images and charts is now free through PocketHealth – making it much easier for them to obtain the documents they may need for themselves and for the healthcare providers they visit.
“Earlier this year, we actually made all image access and report access 100 percent free across PocketHealth, across all of North America. And so, now patients can go online, they can log in, they can download all their images with full diagnostic quality, along with their reports, which they can share with their physician and never pay a cent,” said co-founder and CEO Rishi Nayyar, speaking in a Q&A session at the annual MaRS Health Impact conference in Toronto.
The company will be charging for the value-added services, such as turning the medical language into more easily understood English or French and spotting nextsteps in the documents – something it’s calling Ask My Doctor.
“Ask My Doctor literally analyzes all of your records and gives you a list of questions that you should be asking your doc-
tor, to give you a really constructive discussion with your physician,” said Nayyar. “
PocketHealth is doing much of this by deploying artificial intelligence in its solution, he said, adding the company will continue to build AI-based tools into the product. “What you can expect over the next couple of quarters with PocketHealth is tons of new, thoughtfully built, thoughtfully integrated AI tools that help you as a patient understand what’s going on.”
Nayyar discussed the rapid growth of PocketHealth, fuelled by the need for patients to share their diagnostic images among different healthcare professionals as they go from one medical centre to another.
Before PocketHealth came on the scene in 2016, images were often burned onto
CDs and handed to the patient – usually at a cost, and often requiring the patient to make a long trip to the hospital.
Afterwards, some patients would lose their disks, forcing them to start all over again. In other cases, when patients were being transferred by ambulance to another hospital, crews would be waiting for the CDs to be created. It was an unwieldy process for both patient and provider.
PocketHealth initiated a sea-change across North America by creating a solution that uploaded images to a secure cloud. From there, patients and providers could access them whenever needed.
“We have 1.5 billion images on the platform,” said Nayyar. “It’s the largest patientcontrolled image-base in the entire world.”
The solution really took off because of the COVID-19 crisis, he explained. At that time, the public saw how important it was to have their vaccination records available online.
The idea of bringing other records online, such as their imaging records, was then easily understandable. Patients quickly saw how useful it would be.
Importantly, when patients have access to their records, they become advocates for their own health – and in many cases, their outcomes are improved. The also tend to find errors in the records that are sometimes overlooked by health professionals. “When you give patients access to data … they can find mistakes. They can correct them before it’s even a big deal,” said Nayyar.
Nayyar noted that while most hospitals have electronic archiving systems for diagnostic records, until very recently they haven’t been connected. That meant they weren’t able to share the records.
Some provinces, including Ontario, are now creating the ability to share records, but they still don’t help a patient who injured himself in Ontario and moved to British Columbia, for example. It would still be difficult to transfer the records from one place to the other.
But by using PocketHealth, the patient can control the process. He or she can access the records in the PocketHealth cloud, providing them to clinicians of their choice in Canada, the United States or around the world. “We’ve found the true way to build interoperability is through the patient,” said Nayyar.
Therapeutic power of focused ultrasound has now been further refined
BY SAMANTHA SEXTON AND BRIANNE TULK
Dr. Kullervo Hynynen, vice president of research and innovation and senior scientist at Sunnybrook Research Institute (SRI), has spent more than three decades advancing a revolutionary technology that is well on its way to changing medicine. Now, Dr. Hynynen, his team and collaborators are on the verge of the next major leap in the technology’s potential, this time to scale its reach based on a model of personalization and portability.
The technology, called MRI-guided focused ultrasound or FUS, uses ultrasonic waves to target tissue deep in the body without the need for incisions. Its promise is to improve the quality of life for patients with a wide range of conditions, from essential tremor to uterine fibroids to obsessive compulsive disorder.
A powerful new focused ultrasound device that Hynynen and his team are currently working on is specifically designed to open the blood-brain barrier to allow helpful agents – such as chemotherapy, antibodies, stem cells or gene therapy to reach the brain. Now, a new technology – a next-generation helmet that operates outside of an MRI –has the potential to bring focused ultra-
sound to more patients and more clinics.
“Each device will be custom produced, based on scans of individual patients. It’s also frameless, making it more economical for clinical use since it does not require the real-time use of MRI, Hynynen explains.
“Importantly, it will be more comfortable for the patient. Not only is it completely non-invasive, but it can treat multiple locations in the brain at one time, making the procedure shorter.”
Among the steps in its development, Sunnybrook recently signed a collaboration agreement with Insightec, a global pioneer and leader in FUS device development, to develop and explore the potential of the new helmet design intended to open the blood-brain-barrier and enable drug delivery and treatment options for patients with neurological disorders.
Becoming a world leader with the help of a unique ecosystem: Hynynen, a physicist, is a world-leader in the field of focused ultrasound, inventing about 30 related
patents, founding two start-up companies and authoring over 450 publications. Since joining Sunnybrook from Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in 2006, he has worked with scientific and clinical colleagues to establish Sunnybrook as a world leader in focused ultrasound research and the only Focused Ultrasound Centre of Excellence in Canada. The progress, he said, has been due to the unique ecosystem for commercialization at Sunnybrook and in Canada.
“If you want to make an impact in research, you have to commercialize your discoveries, so more people can benefit,” said Hynynen. This mantra drives Hynynen’s own research ventures, but also Sunnybrook’s.
Building Canada’s leading image-guided therapy research facility: In 2008, along with 55 other scientists, Hynynen led a successful grant for
$74.6 million to establish the Centre for Research in Image-Guided Therapeutics (IGT) at Sunnybrook. The 150,000 square foot space at Sunnybrook encom-
passes preclinical and clinical facilities to develop and test state-of-the-art medical imaging technologies, therapeutics and standards of practice, and translate them into the clinic.
The space includes an extensive machine shop and device development lab, allowing clinicians and scientists to design and produce complex medical devices under highly controlled conditions.
“Many [of our researchers] have gone on to invent new medical technologies and license them or start their own companies,” said Hynynen.
Over 20 start-ups have launched from SRI – many in the image-guided sector. Examples include MOLLI Surgical (recently acquired by Stryker), Conavi, and Profound Medical.
In 2015, Sunnybrook was the first in the world to demonstrate that focused ultrasound paired with microscopic bubbles can be used to open the blood-brain barrier temporarily and non-invasively to direct medication into the brain of a research participant with brain cancer.
Sunnybrook researchers were also the first in the world to study low-intensity focused ultrasound in the opening of the blood-brain barrier or delivery of therapies directly to the brain in brain cancer, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS).
Rishi Nayyar, CEO of PocketHealth, engages in a Q&A session at the MaRS Health Impact conference.
Dr. Kullervo Hynynen
ORION HEALTH VIRTUOSO DIGITAL FRONT DOOR
Orion Health’s Digital Front Door is an omni-channel consumer engagement platform that integrates data, tools and services for end-to-end healthcare navigation and management. Making it easier for patients to navigate their care and connect with the services they need.
Discover how we’re simplifying the healthcare journey and enhancing access and equity for all. Find out more at www.orionhealth.com
Telehealth dials up patient care: More accessibility expands healthcare to everyone
Connecting patients and entire clinical teams ensures that patient care is cohesive and continuous.
BY KASSAUNDRA MCKNIGHT-YOUNG
Telehealth – obtaining and providing healthcare remotely via technology –has changed healthcare for the better. While the pandemic accelerated the growth of telehealth, it has proven virtual care can be quality care. It’s now here to stay, with about one-third of all patient-reported visits being virtual, according to the Canadian Institute for Health Information.
Interest in telehealth continues to grow. By 2029, the Canadian digital health market is projected to grow by 7.62 percent, resulting in a market volume of USD $377.6 million, Statista shows.
Telehealth’s benefits extend well beyond simply offering more ease and convenience to patients (although that is a big benefit.) If it’s not just about making life easier for patients, why are more and more people and healthcare providers turning to telehealth to springboard its growth?
Telehealth simply delivers more to patients – and clinicians. Telehealth brings more accessibility, more patient engagement, more clinical mobility, and more continuity of care which all add up to better healthcare outcomes. It’s a wellness win for everyone. Here’s how.
Accessibility: Telehealth expands access to equitable healthcare. With telehealth, healthcare providers have seen just how much they can impact people outside the local communities they normally serve. Clinicians are virtually available 24/7/365 to conduct routine checkups and triage medical crises as needed.
Geographical, logistical, and time barriers are removed for patients using telehealth. Accessing quality healthcare can often be a challenge for individuals living in rural, remote, or underserved areas, or for people without reliable transportation. Telehealth eliminates these stumbling blocks by enabling patients to connect with healthcare providers from their homes, regardless of where it’s located, or their ability to secure transportation – a huge plus for patient compliance.
Imagine a patient living in a rural area who needs a physician located hours away. With telehealth, the pa-
tient can have a virtual consultation, receive a diagnosis, and even get a prescription – all from home. This saves time, hassles, and even money by reducing transportation costs and ensuring medical care is received quickly which is crucial for positive health outcomes.
Beyond increasing care access for billions of people globally, telehealth has increased the convenience and comfort of care for patients everywhere. People no longer must go to the hospital or clinic for every appointment – or to get a prescription renewal or specialist referral. And they no longer must be con-
Ambient scribe tools will soon show additional functionality, such as the ability to create automated post-visit letters, billing and coding.
cerned with commuting or wait times or worry about leaving work. They simply need to be virtually accessible for their scheduled appointment.
Empowered patients: Telehealth offers the opportunity for people to be more proactive and involved in their healthcare. Virtual visits typically include digital platforms offering easy access to medical records, lab results, treatment plans, healthcare questions, and more.
Additionally, telehealth platforms may include educational resources, reminders for medication and appointments, and tools for tracking health metrics of everything from weight and glucose to monitoring blood pressure. Patients simply upload their health readings to providers.
A recent National Institutes
of Health Study tested an ad hoc mobile app and data measuring devices with a group of patients with chronic conditions. The study found using telehealth helped to increase patient engagement and adherence to treatment.
Using telehealth keeps patients on top of their health and any subsequent treatment plans which ultimately leads to better health outcomes. This selfadvocacy creates more engagement between patients and their health and healthcare providers.
Clinical mobility: For healthcare providers, telehealth brings new levels of mobility and flexibility. Clinicians can manage their schedules more efficiently, balancing in-person visits with virtual consultations. This flexibility is particularly helpful when immediate medical advice is needed but an inperson visit is not possible.
For example, a doctor can quickly connect with a patient via text, email, or video call between in-person appointments. This enhances clinicians’ productivity and ensures patients receive timely medical attention, reducing the risk of complications arising from delayed care.
Though most people think of telehealth as a provider consulting with an at-home patient, it also includes inpatient oversight and care. During a visit in real life (IRL), clinicians can use a mobile tablet or device to record health metrics or communicate with physicians or ancillary staff on the spot.
Clinical mobility telehealth can be especially beneficial to patients being treated by a care team. They often require several appointments with different specialists in one week. Mobility and telehealth could bring all the specialists together digitally in one space, allowing patients one visit to a hospital or clinic for their care.
Kassaundra McKnight-Young is Healthcare CNIO Industry Principal, Zebra Technologies.
Unlocking AI’s full potential in healthcare: A tailored approach
BY ROBERT AMYOT, MD
Imagine a world where high-quality data is seamlessly provided for your clinical decisions, administrative tasks disappear, and your attention is fully on your patients. That world could rapidly take shape, driven by the introduction of artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare.
But as exciting as this vision sounds, AI is a fast-evolving, moving target – what works today could be completely transformed in just six months.
To truly harness AI’s potential, healthcare providers must cut through the noise, adopt tools that address specific challenges, under-
stand the shortcomings, and ensure proper use of the technology to safely enhance care. The key is a thoughtful, selective approach, based on each healthcare practitioner’s individual needs.
Exploring the AI landscape: At MEDFAR, Canada’s fastest-growing electronic medical record (EMR) provider, we piloted several promising AI solutions. These tools showed significant potential, especially in areas like documentation, with many physicians offering positive feedback. However, some physicians found that, in certain situations, non-AI solutions were still more efficient.
“When a physician has a well-organized library of pre-made clickable
texts for medical conditions, the assessment and plan of a note can be completed much faster than with a generative AI response,” noted family physician Dr. David Harrison from British Columbia.
Overall, physicians expressed varied preferences for different
AI solutions, with no single tool emerging as the clear favorite across the board. Each AI solution demon-
strated unique strengths, raising a key question: which one should be integrated into EMRs?
A study published in NEJM Catalyst earlier this year emphasized that targeted AI use is associated with improvements in documentation efficiency and favorable feedback from both patients and physicians without EMR integration. Hence, AI seems to offer tangible benefits now, irrespective of EMR integration, provided one chooses the right tool and applies it safely and effectively.
A key finding from the article highlighted that, although 10,000 physicians and staff were granted access and offered training for the am-
Kassaundra McKnight-Young
Robert Amyot, MD
Let’s empower clinicians through a connected, digital infrastructure
DR. RASHAAD BHYAT
In today’s rapidly evolving healthcare landscape, system-wide interoperability is the next frontier in our journey to developing effective, connected care environments. With increased jurisdictional adoption of digital health systems, especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the next major challenge I see as a physician is to ensure these systems can effectively share clinically necessary information with each other when needed, and that they are guided by interoperable standards.
These standards act as the common protocols and frameworks that allow different digital health systems to communicate seamlessly and securely.
As many of us have experienced firsthand, the integration of technology into healthcare can be life-changing. From the early days of electronic medical and health records (EMRs and EHRs) and the introduction of virtual care, the tools available to clinicians have since expanded dramatically. Looking ahead, we need to ensure that our health technology infrastructure does not fall short of delivering seamless and efficient care. As highlighted in Infoway’s 2024 National Survey of Canadian Physicians, while 95 percent of Canadian physicians use EMR and/or EHR systems, many of these systems remain fragmented and siloed.
Fragmentation of health information across digital health platforms can result in significant administrative burdens and increased clinician burnout, and more importantly, compromised patient safety.
The current state of healthcare IT: Despite widespread adoption of EMRs, many physicians continue to grapple with inefficient digital health tools and modes of navigating the healthcare system. While many physicians rely on EMRs in their daily practice, the lack of integration between these systems varies greatly, and fax remains prevalent.
In fact, nearly three quarters of those physicians surveyed experience challenges that result from the lack of integration between the different systems they use. Some challenges include spending extended amounts of time looking for patient information, and the requirement of multiple logins.
As clinicians, providing optimal patient care is at the forefront of our calling, but when our digital systems are not interconnected, it can lead to inefficiencies, such as receiving multiple, unlabeled copies of a patient’s test results – which require valuable time and effort to sort through – or not receiving the results at all!
This not only detracts from our ability to provide timely and effective care but also contributes to an overwhelming administrative burden for clinicians and raises concerns about patient safety.
While we have made considerable pro-
gress in recent years, there is still much work to be done to fully harness the potential of innovative technologies in the digital health landscape, particularly regarding interoperability.
If these challenges are addressed, physicians can focus our energy where it belongs – on delivering the best possible care to our patients.
Efficient technology: The benefits of
adopting innovative digital health solutions cannot be overstated, yet they are also not a cure-all.
Advanced technologies streamline workflows, significantly reducing the time clinicians spend on administrative tasks. Modern and user-friendly EMRs allow for faster and easier access to patient health data, which ultimately improves the delivery of patient care.
When supported by appropriate practice models and incentives, efficient technology also enhances communication among healthcare providers, leading to more coordinated and effective care.
In addition, we now know that support for the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in physician practice is growing. In fact, 7 percent of physicians surveyed say they use
Dr. Rashaad Bhyat
Provinces in Atlantic Canada are giving patients access to their own records
Online access to test results, medication histories and more is giving patients more control over their health.
BY NORM TOLLINSKY
Awave of patient empowerment is sweeping Canada’s Atlantic provinces as patient records containing lists of dispensed medications, immunization histories, lab test results, diagnostic imaging reports, and information about hospital and primary care visits, are now or soon to be accessible in all four provinces on web-based portals and mobile phone apps.
Between 350,000 and 400,000 patients in Nova Scotia are using YourHealthNS, and close to 100,000 patients in Newfoundland and Labrador have downloaded MyHealthNL.
New Brunswick’s YourHealthNB stands out as the first portal in North America to include a patient-mediated Patient Summary, a health record extract of key health information that can be shared with healthcare providers in unplanned or emergency care situations locally, across provincial borders and even internationally. And across the Northumberland Strait, Prince Edward Island is just a few months away from launching its MyPEI portal.
“We know that when patients have access to their health records, they are more engaged in their healthcare, and when they are more engaged in their healthcare, they have better outcomes,” remarked Dr. Matthew Clarke, an ER doc and associate chief medical information officer at Nova Scotia Health.
Nova Scotia: Originally launched in November 2023, YourHealthNS provides patients with information about access to care, and a library of information about medical conditions and diseases. It also allows them to book blood tests, X-rays, flu shot and COVID-19 vaccine appointments.
In February of this year, personal health information was added on a pilot basis for some 14,000 patients registered at six primary care clinics, and as of July, all Nova Scotians 16 years of age and older with a Nova Scotia health card have access to their health records, reports Scott McKenna, chief information officer for the Nova Scotia Health Authority.
other providers and they include language that patients might not understand.
“It’s not a matter of transparency or not wanting the patient to have the information. It’s a matter of how the patient would interpret a report,” said Dr. Clarke.
While information about medications and immunizations is easily extracted from central databases, sourcing information from primary care and hospital information systems was much more challenging as there are no central repositories from which information from these systems can be ingested, noted McKenna.
“We’re investing with Oracle Health on a big project to roll out a clinical information system across our 40 plus hospitals, but we currently have multiple systems in our hospitals and two approved EMRs for primary care.”
In order to extract information from these systems, Nova Scotia is leveraging cloud technologies, the FHIR R4 standard and data pipelines to move data from disparate systems using automation, so “no
wellness and healthy eating information. Nova Scotians can also use the portal to book appointments for a variety of tests and vaccinations, and even locate the nearest automated external defibrillator.
New Brunswick: Like Nova Scotia’s portal, part of MyHealthNB consists of general health system information, including healthcare navigation resources, wait time data and information about social support programs that is accessible to everyone. Another section accessible only by login and patient authentication includes personal health information, including a list of dispensed medications, lab test results, diagnostic imaging reports and a history of immunizations.
However, what makes MyHealthNB unique is its Patient Summary, which conforms to the pan-Canadian Patient Summary specification developed by Canada Health Infoway, which is, in turn, based on the International Patient Summary specification and the HL7 Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources Implementation Guide.
The Patient Summary contains a snapshot of essential healthcare information, including medications and immunizations that patients travelling across provincial or international borders can share in the event of unplanned or emergency situations.
The Patient Summary has been widely adopted in Europe and was used for the first time by hundreds of thousands of pilgrims travelling to Saudi Arabia for the Hajj in June. It’s also being considered for use at future Olympic games, according to Abhi Kalra, executive vice-president for connected care at Canada Health Infoway.
Information available includes a history of medications prescribed and dispensed, results of blood and urine tests, information about diagnostic imaging tests, immunizations records, and basic information about hospital and primary care visits. The portal provides up to 10 years of information about medications, immunizations and hospital visits, and a year’s worth of information about lab tests, diagnostic imaging and primary care visits with information from previous years to be added over time.
Most of the information is available to patients after approximately seven days except for diagnostic imaging information, which is available 14 days after the patient’s provider receives a report. This gives the provider an opportunity to contact the patient in advance to share any life-changing results. The portal includes X-ray and ultrasound reports, but only the date, time and body part imaged for CT and MRI scans as the intended audience for these reports are
clinicians are spending their valuable time running data reports for this initiative,” said McKenna. “All of this is only possible,” he added, “because of Nova Scotia legislation and regulations under the Personal Health Information Act that enable us to bring all of the health records together to create a comprehensive electronic health record for every Nova Scotian.
“This is what differentiates us from other jurisdictions in Canada, because we’re bringing together the health data for Nova Scotians from all parts of the healthcare system, including primary care,” said McKenna.
“As a practising physician in Nova Scotia,” said Dr. Clarke, “I would have said three years ago that it would be impossible to do what we have done. It was an incredible amount of effort to pull all of these pieces together.”
“None of this could have happened without the incredible partnerships we had,” added McKenna. “Everyone pushed really hard in the same direction.”
In addition to personal health information, YourHealthNS contains a wealth of other information, including emergency department and diagnostic imaging wait times by location, healthcare navigation resources, as well as physical activity, mental
In an unplanned or emergency, patients are able to share their personal health information through a QR code on their cellphones. Residents of New Brunswick, the first jurisdiction in North America to adopt a patientmediated Patient Summary, can use it when travelling internationally, across Canada and even locally when engaging with a healthcare provider they’ve never seen and has no information about them.
“Only ten to 20 percent of the use cases for the Patient Summary in New Brunswick will be for out of province travel, but 20 percent of New Brunswickers don’t have a family doctor, so they’ll be able to use their Patient Summary when they go to a walk-in clinic and see a provider who doesn’t have a history of them,” said Kalra.
A patient portal like MyHealthNB provides “an ocean of information” that a healthcare provider in an emergency would have to spend time to digest, explained Kalra. The Patient Summary, in contrast, is a compressed view of essential information.
The healthcare sector “has been working on sharing healthcare information for decades, but it has always been between providers,” said Mark McAllister, CEO of VeroSource Solutions, a Fredericton-based company that worked with New Brunswick’s Department of Health to develop MyHealthNB.
“Until now, we’ve never empowered patients to share their information, so New Brunswick was very
innovative and brave to be the first to move forward with this.”
The rest of Canada is not far behind, noted Kalra, with both Alberta and British Columbia planning to launch Patient Summaries in the very near future.
New Brunswick’s Patient Summary, McAllister notes, “is still missing information about allergies, intolerances and medical problems which are held in different systems that we don’t have access to at this time, but we’re looking at a road map to get there.”
Much of the information in MyHealthNB comes from central databases. The exception is information from primary care, which is housed in several different EMRs and not currently available for inclusion in the portal or the Patient Summary.
Newfoundland and Labrador: Newfoundland and Labrador started rolling out MyHealthNL as a web-based portal in February of this year to 5,000 people and opened the registration process to the entire province in April. Three months later, it launched as the MyHealthNL app for both Apple and Android phones.
MyHealthNL is a digital front door with information about navigating the health system and an extensive library of health information about everything from asthma and diabetes to parenting and sexual health.
Patients can also log into their personal health record containing a list of dispensed medications, lab results, X-ray reports and allergy information, said Russell Bungay, senior director, provincial clinical systems with NL Health Services. “Our roadmap is to include other information with ultrasound reports and some pathology results in our next release.”
Hospital information comes from a single, province-wide Meditech hospital information system which feeds into a provincial repository, but earlier this year, the province announced plans to transition to an Epic HIS. According to Bungay, there are no immediate or short-term plans to access information from EMRs.
Information is available after a delay of seven days for lab results and 14 days for X-ray results. “In the future,” said Bungay, “we’ll have another look at those delays because as patients become more empowered, they’ll probably want to see their results a little sooner.”
Having this information at their fingertips empowers patients to monitor their chronic conditions, have more informed discussions with their physicians, and save time and money on travel because in the traditional model, said Bungay, patients would often have to travel long distances to get their bloodwork results from their physicians. Now, they’ll be able to get them on their phone or computer and, if the results are normal, travel to a medical appointment won’t be necessary. In addition, it’s now possible to easily and securely share personal health information with a family member or trusted caregiver to support patients through their health journey.
MyHealthNL, said Bungay, was developed in-house with assistance from Orion Health. “We are proud to support Newfoundland and Labrador with MyHealthNL, a platform that empowers patients to take control of their healthcare journey,” said Michael Craig, vice president of national solutions at Orion Health.
“By providing access to vital health information, MyHealthNL is not only improving the patient experience but also helping the healthcare system become more efficient and connected. This is a significant step forward in delivering patient-centered care across the province.”
Prince Edward Island: Unlike most jurisdictions across Canada, Prince Edward Island has standardized on one EMR for the entire province. Until recently, community practices in Prince Edward Island used several different independently se-
lected EMRs and paper in some cases. Today, more than 95 primary care clinics, more than 200 primary care providers and an additional 1,000 users, including clerical staff and allied healthcare providers, are using Telus Health’s Collaborative Health Record (CHR) software.
“When we considered implementing a CHR, we chose to go with a single instance so it would be consistent across all users to support training, reporting and integration, so standardization has been our guiding principle,” said Laurae Kloschinsky, as-
sistant deputy minister of PEI’s Department of Health and Wellness.
“At the same time we were doing this,” she continued, “we were implementing medical homes, a team-based care model, so physicians, nurses, physiotherapists and social workers, are all charting on one system.”
With one EMR and one province-wide hospital information system from Cerner (now Oracle Health), pulling information into the soon to be launched MyPEI portal is a lot easier.
Pharmacy Technician Led Remote BPMH
Did you know that NTS has registered pharmacy technicians on staff to help with:
•Remote Completion of Best Possible Medication History (BPMH)
Harness the potential of remote pharmacy technicians, bridging the gaps caused by turnover, burnout, and vacations. Enjoy seamless support and unrivaled efficiency for your team’s triumph.
Virtual health hub will support advanced solutions for remote care
BY IVAR MENDEZ, MD
The Canadian healthcare system faces significant challenges: our hospitals are constantly at overcapacity, 16 percent of the population do not have access to a primary care physician, and our emergency rooms are overcrowded.
The current model of centralized healthcare is inefficient and costly, frequently causing delays in diagnosis and treatment that lead to poor outcomes. Underserviced rural and remote populations are disproportionately affected by this centralized model.
The advent of the COVID-19 pandemic has been a catalyst for the integration of virtual care with in-person care. It also created an opportunity to redesign the healthcare system to become more clinically efficient, increase capacity, reduce costs and enhance the patient/provider experience.
Saskatchewan is perfectly suited for virtual care solutions as it has a large land mass with a dispersed population. A third of Saskatchewan residents live in rural and remote locations, many of which are Indigenous communities.
There are significant barriers to accessing healthcare services by these populations. The cost of transporting Indigenous patients for healthcare is enormous – the First Nations and Inuit Health Branch (FNIHB) spent $103 million last year for medical transportation in Saskatchewan for an Indigenous population of less than 200,000 individuals.
Our team has studied the sociodemographic barriers in Saskatchewan for accessing healthcare and diagnostic services and have found substantial disparities in accessing those services. For example, our
research showed that pregnant women living in rural and remote communities were 30 percent less likely to receive an obstetrical ultrasound than their urban counterparts. This disparity increases for Indigenous women who were 50 percent less likely to have an obstetrical ultrasound than non-Indigenous women.
For the past decade, we have been working on virtual care solutions for rural and remote populations in Saskatchewan. Emphasis has been placed in co-developing, with Indigenous communities, culturally appropriate and innovative virtual care interventions aimed at the most vulnerable segments of the population – such as children and pregnant women.
Our studies have shown that with virtual care technologies such as remote presence robotics, about 70 percent of acutely ill children in remote locations can be treated in their own communities.
Another example is the implementation of telerobotic sonography to provide prenatal ultrasound to Indigenous pregnant women. We have shown that this technology is clinically effective, had a high degree of acceptance and satisfaction by clinicians and patients, was culturally safe and cost effective.
Our experience with virtual care in Saskatchewan has led to the development of a Virtual Health Hub (VHH) model that will enable the scaling up of multiple health services to remote Indigenous and rural communities across Saskatchewan and beyond.
This project has been led by a partnership between the Whitecap Dakota First Nation of Saskatchewan, the Saskatchewan Indian Institute of Technologies (SIIT) and the Virtual Care and Remote Presence Robotics Program at the University of Saskatchewan. The VHH is fully funded by
both the Federal Government of Canada and the Province of Saskatchewan.
The VHH, (https://virtualhealthhub.ca/) will have a specialized facility designed to house virtual healthcare services. This facility will contain service areas that are organized around centralized hubs or command and control locations, with adjacent breakout spaces for private virtual care consultations.
The facility has conference, training spaces, technology labs and breakout/rest areas to fulfill its mandate of clinical service, innovation, research, and teaching. It will contain spaces with flexibility to train multidisciplinary teams of technologists, robotic and computer engineers, and healthcare workers.
Gathering spaces to host specialty events focused on advancing remote health science are part of the design. It will also contain culturally sensitive grounding and reflection spaces, such as a centrally located Elder’s Room on the main floor.
The VHH will utilize advanced virtual care technologies such as remote presence robots, artificial intelligence, 5G telecommunications and intelligent peripherals and sensors for remote patient assessment and monitoring.
The VHH building will be located on indigenous land at Whitecap Dakota First Nation. Conceptually, the building design is inspired by Indigenous cultural symbols such as a chief headdress (symbol of leadership), the Saskatchewan landscape, and human health.
The building will also be informed by the design principles and drivers of wellness, honest materials, generational thinking and sustainability.
Focus has been put into an Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), and the VHH will be a green building that respects the land and its resources.
A major strength of the VHH will be its training programs. We have partnered with Saskatchewan post-secondary institutions that train healthcare workers such as the SIIT. Indigenous learners are at the core of SIIT, representing over 90 percent of the student body.
In partnership with the SIIT, we have developed a Virtual Health Hub Assistant applied certificate program.
Graduates of this program will be equipped with the necessary skills to support VHH clinicians in remotely delivering virtual healthcare services and locally assist patients in accessing virtual care in their home communities.
A foundational pillar in the functioning of the VHH is a systematic and standardized approach to deploying virtual care services to rural and remote populations. Understanding the unique characteristics and needs of each rural community is crucial to providing tailored healthcare solutions.
The new VHH building is expected to open in the fall of 2026. We envision the VHH facility to symbolize the medicine chest of the future.
Ivar Mendez MD, PhD, FRCSC, FACS, FCAHS., is Director of the Saskatchewan Virtual Health Hub, Emeritus Professor of Surgery and Director of the Remote Presence Robotics Program, University of Saskatchewan.
Dr. Ivar Mendez walking with a remote presence robot used for the delivery of virtual healthcare.
North West telepharmacists ensure high-quality virtual prescription renewals
BY SALLY GINSON DUKE AND KEVIN MCDONALD
North West Telepharmacy Solutions is a banner of The North West Company and is known to lead an innovative telepharmacy practice. This article highlights a program incorporating telepharmacists to deliver best practices in virtual, team-based care.
A virtual pharmacist team managed by North West Telepharmacy Solutions provides pharmacist services to HealthLink BC as part of a provincial telehealth model. These virtual pharmacists were invited to collaborate with a team of virtual physicians and clinical program support staff to increase access to a publicly available prescription renewal service.
The virtual Provincial Prescription Renewal Support Service (PPRSS) was launched in early 2023. This service receives requests directly from community pharmacists across the province for patients who lack a dedicated primary care provider and require a prescription renewal for one or more chronic therapies (not including cancer medications, cannabis, narcotics, and controlled substances). The PPRSS team aims to process each request within five days or less of receiving.
In the first year of operation, the PPRSS team issued a total of 1,621 prescriptions over the course of 578 eligible patient encounters. There were 325 additional patient encounters where prescription renewals could not be provided and reasons included the request was for an out-ofscope prescription or virtual assessment was considered inadequate to determine health status.
Approximately 10 percent of all patient encounters resulted in referral for in-person evaluation, and another 10 percent were returned to the community pharmacist for follow-up.
PPRSS Workflow: Community pharmacists submit an electronic request. In BC, community pharmacists may adapt a prescription by changing of medication form or dose, or renewing prescriptions when existing refills are used up and the prescriber is otherwise unavailable.
However, in some scenarios, the adaptation or renewal is not reasonable for the community pharmacist to complete without additional information or support.
The PPRSS service enables community pharmacists to submit a request by completing an electronic form (eForm) using a secure portal, noting the medications needing renewal, required contact information, and relevant information about the patients.
Requests are made when the prescription is expired (two or more years old) or the community pharmacist is unsure whether the patient is stable for renewal/adaptation and would like the opinion of a physician.
Community pharmacists exercise their best judgment in determining whether to provide an emergency supply of medications while the PPRSS team is consulted.
PPRSS team manages cases virtually: For every submitted eForm, a patient file is created in a secure shared record system. All files are transferred to the Virtual Pharmacist [VPharm] first.
The VPharm consults the provincial view-only electronic health record to confirm health history, including laboratory results and the record of prescription medications dispensed. He or she then telephones the patient to verify actual medication use, including effectiveness and tolerability.
Obtaining a best possible medication history [BPMH] is considered a key step in a safe virtual prescription renewal process and is a foundational part of the VPharm’s assessment. The VPharm identifies prescription renewal needs, documents their assessment and recommended next steps, and queues the file to a Virtual Physician, noting the best time for a follow-up call to the patient.
After reviewing the record, the Virtual Physician telephones the patient to finalize their assessment and determine the pre-
health products across various clinical programs.
Our recent Virtual Care Insights and Trends Report illustrates the successful application of these practices, with significant improvements in the adoption of virtual health platforms.
We’re highlighting five of the insights and trends below.
Toxic Drug and Health Alerts: A text messaging service that shares timely alerts about toxic drugs in the community. There are 7,100 total subscribers across B.C. All regional health authorities adopted the system between May 2022 and June 2023. Collaboration occurs between the BC Centre for Disease Control Harm Reduction team, PVH, and regional health authorities.
•Impact: Alerts aim to reduce drug poisonings and deaths.
GoodSAM: An online tool that enables instant on-scene video between a patient or frontline paramedic crew and clinical specialists in dispatch.
There have been 300+ requests for consultations sent within PHSA. Collaboration occurs between BC Emergency Health Services, Patient Transfer Network, PVH, NICU, PICU, and regional health authorities
•Impact: Adding video to the current triaging system helps assess the most appropriate care for a patient.
Video Remote Interpreter: Provides ondemand access to 240 languages, including American Sign Language 24/7, when a patient and health-care provider meet in person. 35 percent of total interpreting sessions at PHSA used audio or video remote interpreting. Collaboration occurs among Provincial Language Services, PVH, several clinics across PHSA and regional health authorities.
•Impact: Used in several clinical sites
across PHSA and regional health authorities, VRI ensures people who are Deaf or Hard of Hearing or have limited English proficiency can access healthcare.
Remote Patient Monitoring (TELUS Home Health Monitoring): Uses technology to monitor a patient’s health (usually from their home), and share the information electronically with healthcare teams. There were 100,000 cumulative encounters at PHSA programs from April 2020 to December 2023. Collaboration occurs among BCEHS and PVH.
•Impact: Empowers patients to participate in their healthcare monitoring.
MyGuide Long COVID: A web-based tool that improves access to resources and information for people living with Long
COVID. 2,100 visitors completed the online self-assessment in the first 90 days of launch. Collaboration takes place between the Post-COVID Interdisciplinary Clinical Care Network and PVH.
Successes of the storytelling approach include Toxic Drug and Health Alerts, and GoodSAM, an on-scene app for paramedics.
•Impact: Empowers patients to take an active role in their healthcare.
The shift to data storytelling and the implementation of dynamic dashboards has enhanced how we utilize provincial
virtual health data. This strategy has not only improved data usability but has also been critical in driving the expansion and enhancement of virtual care services within the province.
By transforming data into a strategic asset, Provincial Virtual Health (PVH) at PHSA has significantly advanced the strategic direction on virtual health initiatives.
The success of our virtual health analytics initiatives is a direct result of the dedication, creativity, and expertise of a talented group. Key members of the team include: Lisa Liu (Coordinator), Maanash Saamal (Business Intelligence Specialist), Leena Bhatt (Evaluation Specialist), Nicholas Milton (Leader), and Neel Majumder (Senior Leader).
Telepharmacists ensure high-quality virtual renewals
scription renewals they can provide. In some cases, they direct the patient to obtain lab work or recommend an in-person assessment (e.g. at a walk-in clinic or Urgent and Primary Care Centre).
The PPRSS physician follows up on any lab work they order by contacting the patient once results are available.
When prescription renewals are issued by a PPRSS virtual physician, they are faxed electronically to the pharmacy that submitted the eForm.
With patient consent, once an assessment is complete, the PPRSS team documentation is uploaded to the provincial view-only electronic health record to be available for review by future care providers.
Case Situation: A vulnerable adult with unstable health who is presenting to a ‘new’ community pharmacist for the first time. [CPharm]
Background: 83-year adult ‘unattached’ (i.e., without dedicated primary care provider) for unknown period of time. In
the past year, complicated by grief due to sudden loss of adult child who advocated for parent’s health needs. A newly appointed power of attorney contact – a friend – is involved and keen to arrange care and support, part of which is estab-
A virtual team-based approach, led by experienced telepharmacists, can improve safe access to med renewals.
lishing a relationship with a new community pharmacist.
The community pharmacist submits a renewal request to PPRSS for medications that include:
•Atorvastatin 10mg daily
•Candesartan 16mg/Hydrochlorothiazide 12.5mg daily
The PPRSS virtual pharmacist consults the provincial electronic health record to review recent records of care, laboratory tests and medication dispense record. It
shows three ER visits in the past month with a diagnosis of right leg deep thrombosis and new medications prescribed. Another ER visit indicates a diagnosis of viral pneumonia. There is much more to the patient’s recent history, and this case is highlighted to demonstrate the layers of complexity and health instability that may underlie what ‘on surface’ seems like a request for a few ‘simple’ prescription renewals.
In summary, a virtual team-based approach led by experienced telepharmacists can improve safe access to prescription medication renewals, particularly for a province with a significant number of citizens lacking attachment to a regular primary care provider.
A key goal of the service is to support community pharmacists throughout a geographically large province to provide optimal care to the citizens in their own communities.
Sally Ginson Duke is Pharmacist Services Lead, HealthLink BC. Kevin McDonald is Director, North West Telepharmacy Solutions.
bient AI scribe, only 34.4 percent had used the application within the 10-week study period.
On average, those who used the AI scribe enabled it for 88 patient encounters during this time.
The authors noted that the rollout encountered several barriers to adoption, which must be carefully identified and addressed to ensure a successful implementation.
The Future of AI in healthcare: While AI-driven scribing tools have gained significant attention, the future of AI in healthcare extends far beyond documentation. AI holds the potential to elevate every stage of the patient journey, from streamlining triage and paperwork to extracting and organizing data, enhancing patient education, and optimizing follow-up care.
Dr. Tahmeena Ali, a family physician and medical director at Catalyst Kinetics Medical in Surrey, British Columbia, highlights AI’s ability to organize patient information in one place, just in time for the physician.
This allows doctors to fully grasp the
patient’s condition and make more informed decisions. “AI could review a patient’s reason for visit and medical history to provide useful insights for the physician’s consideration,” she explained. “It could also send educational materials to patients after their visit, helping them better understand and manage their health.”
AI’s ability to sift through the fastgrowing medical literature and instantly deliver relevant, personalized insights for each patient could prove to be a gamechanger. “Physicians can’t keep up with all the new evidence emerging in realtime, but AI can,” said Dr. Mark Karanofsky, a family physician and unit director at the Goldman Herzl Family Practice Centre in Montreal, Quebec.
“These tools can guide us in identifying the best treatments and risks, optimizing our time and improving the quality of care.”
Re-centering the doctor-patient relationship: One of AI’s greatest potentials lies in re-centering the doctor-patient relationship. Today, physicians are overwhelmed with administrative tasks like charting, data entry, clicking through disjointed IT systems to fill out forms and requests.
They are also managing inboxes, coordinating follow-ups and transfers, nav-
igating through all sorts of distracting system alerts, answering non-urgent patient and administrative queries, reconciling requests with results, which detract from their face time with patients. AI can help alleviate this burden by automating much of the administrative work, freeing up more time for doctors to engage directly with their patients.
“As AI tools become more reliable, I believe they will not only save time but also improve the advice and treatments
AI can streamline workflows, reduce errors and improve the patient experience, notes Dr. Tahmeena Ali.
we offer,” Dr. Karanofsky states. “AI will allow doctors to focus on their patients rather than their computer screens, helping regain the human connection that many feel has been lost in the transition to digital systems.”
Dr. Ali shares this vision, noting that AI can streamline workflows, reduce errors, and improve patient experience. “AI can automatically update charts, file lab reports, and prepare consultation letters, all of which contribute to more efficient
care,” she explains. “In the long term, AI could reduce clinical errors and increase provider satisfaction by lightening the administrative load.”
Addressing concerns and challenges: Despite AI’s potential, significant concerns persist – especially regarding data integrity, accuracy, privacy, and tool reliability. Physicians like Dr. Karanofsky emphasize the need for robust validation and transparency in AI applications as regulatory agencies begin voicing their stance.
“Both clinicians and the public must have confidence in these tools. How they’re validated and who will assume responsibility for their recommendations are critical issues,” he noted.
The failure of past attempts to revolutionize healthcare has shown that technology alone cannot drive success. The adoption of AI must be carefully managed, with healthcare providers fully supported in adapting their practices to make the most of new tools. This will require collaboration between tech companies and healthcare providers to ensure that AI solutions are practical, safe, and tailored to meet real clinical needs.
Dr. Robert Amyot is the Chief Operating Officer at MEDFAR.
Empowering clinicians through efficient digital health infrastructure
some form of AI or machine learning, a noticeable increase compared to 2 percent in 2021.
When harnessed effectively, emerging technologies, including generative AI models, have the potential to transform clinical practice by automating tasks, and offering advanced decision-support tools and analytics.
While there is widespread support for the potential value of digital solutions in healthcare, we need to implement a missing ingredient – interoperability – to make the solution truly effective.
The role of interoperable technology: Infoway’s Shared pan-Canadian Interoperability Roadmap acts as a blueprint for health system interoperability in Canada. The Roadmap highlights the need for secure and timely exchange of health information between systems, ensuring that those who need it can easily access and understand the information.
From my perspective as a physician, enhancing interoperability will mean seamlessly accessing my patient’s critical health information where and when it is needed the most to improve the quality of care I
North
provide to them. Hours spent chasing down records and trying to navigate the current fax-heavy, disconnected system could be redirected toward patient care. Ultimately, improving the connectedness of systems will lead to more informed
We need to implement a missing ingredient, interoperability, to make the solution truly effective.
decision-making, reduced duplicate testing, and improved patient outcomes. Crucially, interoperable systems contribute to patient safety by minimizing the risks of errors that can occur when information is fragmented, inaccessible, and does not follow the patient.
Interoperability is essential to both clinicians and the patients we care for, as it lays the foundation for a safer, more modern, and patient-centered healthcare experience.
Supporting clinicians with access to information: To realize the full potential of digital health technologies, especially as a means of advancing interoperable healthcare within Canada, continuous investment
West Telepharmacy and FirstHx
communicate to pharmacists and other clinical team members.
and innovation is essential. This is particularly important in primary care, where modern infrastructure can dramatically improve the efficiency and quality of care.
Policymakers and healthcare leaders must continue to champion and support smart implementations and continuous advancements in digital health technology. This includes providing tools with user friendly interfaces, ongoing training, and robust technical support to utilize these technologies effectively.
A commitment like this will also attract new generations of physicians who seek efficient and effective work environments.
Looking ahead: The journey to mod-
ernize and adopt an interoperable health system is not merely a technical upgrade. It represents the steps needed to improve patient care, while also reducing administrative burdens on clinicians. By investing, supporting, and advocating for interoperable digital health technologies, we can enhance the efficiency of healthcare delivery and support the well-being of both patients and providers.
As clinicians, it is crucial that we continue to embrace technological innovations and express the urgency of having a truly interoperable digital infrastructure, ensuring a sustainable, healthier future for both our profession, and for our patients.
Alberta transforming healthcare operations
able and training guides ensure the process is enacted with consistency.
process but also ensures that we gather critical information that might otherwise be missed,” noted Sammu Dhaliwall, senior manager for Business Development, Research and Health Innovation at NTS. “The tool’s ability to adapt to the patient’s medical condition is something we haven’t seen in other BPMH solutions.”
Once the interview is complete, MedHx generates a summary document that can be easily integrated into the hospital’s information system. This document provides a clear and concise record of the patient’s medication history, which is readily accessible to other healthcare professionals involved in the patient’s care, making it easier to review and utilize for medication reconciliation.
“I am very excited for what’s to come for MedHx,” commented Dr. Chris O’Connor, CEO at FirstHx. “It revolutionizes medication profiles by providing a precise digital medication list that saves time, boosts efficiency, and reduces errors –paving the way for safer, more efficient med profiles in every healthcare setting.
In the future, NTS and FirstHx plan to develop the program further by allowing patients to complete the BPMH tool while they wait in the ER or before pre-operative appointments. This will expedite the process and improve the accuracy of the information gathered by engaging patients directly.
Although still in its early stages, NTS’s remote BPMH program has already shown promising results. An informal pilot conducted at a small hospital in Northern Ontario demonstrated that using FirstHx and remote pharmacy technicians significantly improved the standardization of BPMH interviews.
The feedback from hospital staff has been positive, particularly in terms of the useful and detailed information that the pharmacy technicians can gather and
“The results from our pilot program were encouraging, as we saw clear improvements in both the quality and efficiency of the BPMH process,” said Dhaliwall.
Looking ahead, NTS plans to expand the program to the more than 100 hospital clients it currently serves across Canada. By doing so, the company hopes to not only address the resource challenges faced by hospitals but also to improve patient safety on a national scale.
This innovative approach is a prime example of how technology and telepharmacy can work together to solve real-world problems in healthcare, ultimately benefiting both patients and healthcare professionals.
Forms to digital
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 8
rheumatology. It ensures that all steps, from enrolment to treatment coordination, are managed efficiently, reducing the administrative burden.
Additionally, the platform supports specialty and retail pharmacies, allowing patients and physicians the flexibility to choose their preferred pharmacy for prescription fulfillment, enhancing convenience and improving the overall quality of care.
Overall, a flexible workflow integration is essential for optimizing healthcare operations, improving patient outcomes, and providing a higher level of care.
Reducing administrative burden: Administrative burdens can mean administrative burnout. The risk of errors and discrepancies in patient records can lead to further work and negative outcomes for the patient experience.
months, the HR department saw significant relief as digital workers took over boring and repetitive tasks, freeing human staff to focus on more rewarding work.
•Business ownership: Automations are identified, prioritized and monitored by the business teams, ensuring that the automations serve their purpose. This structure fosters a sense of ownership and accountability.
•Employee satisfaction: Automating tasks which staff dislike. “If you hate it, automate it,” is a great way to communicate what intelligent automation can do (boring, repetitive, and high-volume work) and also spurs demand.
•Benefit realization: Reporting via analytical dashboards, which update every 15 minutes, highlight the impact of automation on the organization. With 200 years of work freed to date and counting, the results speak for themselves.
The success of early automations was fueled by a rigid and detailed process. Leveraging concepts from the Robotic Operating Model, the team developed a comprehensive methodology which was then audited by internal audit, privacy, risk and external bodies. End to end process documentation ensures the process is repeat-
Auxita’s streamlined workflows ensure that patient data is consistently updated and easily accessible, facilitating quicker decision-making and treatment planning. With patient information digitally captured, there is less risk of details being inaccurately copied into paper forms.
Auxita’s approach to reducing administrative burdens extends to enhanc-
Using an AI scribe solution, doctors reported enhanced interactions and less time spent on documentation.
ing collaboration among healthcare teams. By providing a unified platform that supports interdisciplinary communication and data sharing, Auxita promotes coordinated care delivery.
This collaborative environment fosters better patient outcomes through improved care coordination and reduced
Some examples of the work accomplished by the group includes:
•Cancel and rebroadcast shifts: This automation rebroadcasts open shifts to staff automatically. Most importantly, the automation only sends notifications of open shifts to staff who have not picked up extra shifts and to those who are available. In addition, this automation flags scenarios which require human intervention.
•Offer letters: This automation runs a report from our hiring software and after
“It’s crucial to have an executive sponsor who reports directly to the CEO or CIO,” to accelerate adoption of these solutions.
going through a series of complicated business rules, drafts an offer letter and sends it for approval.
Tutt emphasized the importance of executive sponsorship in driving these initiatives. “It’s crucial to have an executive sponsor who reports directly to the CEO or CIO. Their support significantly accelerates adoption and the speed of implementation,” he said.
duplication of efforts. Solutions like Auxita are pivotal in ensuring that administrative tasks no longer overshadow the primary goal of delivering compassionate and effective patient care.
Leading the way: As a hospital with hundreds of thousands of patient visits each year and a staff of over 3,200, the demands to keep employees satisfied and to deliver excellence in patient care never wane. Digital solutions such as Auxita enable hospitals to set a new standard for healthcare delivery.
The role of technology in streamlining operations and improving patient outcomes will only become more critical. Auxita’s commitment to creating interoperable, flexible solutions is paving the way for a future where healthcare providers can focus on what truly matters – the well-being of their patients.
To learn more about how Auxita is transforming healthcare and improving patient care, visit their website www.auxita.com
