Ontario Launches Provincial Primary Care Record Procurement

[Robert Wells]

I am not sure what to make of this news. There are positive and negative aspects to the initiative. The potential for overspending and disruption is quite high but perhaps it advances Ontario toward one health record for all.

What do people think?

https://santishealth.ca/insights/rapid-recap-ontario-launches-provincial-primary-care-record-procurement/

[Kim Locke]

@Robert-Wells I don't see anything there in the article mentioning digitizing analog records. Nova Scotia has already started this process.

[Chris Johnston]

@Robert-Wells @Kim-Locke

It's an interesting approach. I love the push for interoperability, stringent security, data sovereignty and the move towards a more cohesive primary care environment.

I'm not seeing anything about post-deployment monitoring or maintenance - which is hopefully an oversight in the article rather than in the requirements.

I'm also not seeing anything about requiring patients and community partners to be involved in the procurement, development, deployment or post-deployment processes, which is a concern.

I fear the potential for overspend and disruption is less of a risk and more of a certainty in all projects of this scale. Breaking eggs to cook an omelette comes to mind

One can only hope that Infoway won't be involved in this as well.

[Debra Turnbull]

@Robert-Wells

I looked up Santis' website; under the "Our Team" page:

We’ve built an unstoppable team coast-to-coast with diverse experience in management consulting, communications, and government affairs.

We know Canada’s health care landscape inside and out, because we’ve helped shape it.

... as we continue to run Roughshod over the Patient Voice; in line with the Healthcare System...

This looks like a PR firm that is working for the government of Ontario. It appears that they have been tasked with the Primary Care solution to compliment the Connecting Ontario program (2000-2019). The original program connected the hospital data by transferring components from hospitals; up to the province's repositories. By centralizing the data, the province could provide security measures and make the data available back to clinicians: Ontario hospital physicians, primary care physicians, specialists, etc. The data was in Read-Only mode. Only hospitals could write to the repositories.

And - you are correct - this is the other half of the story. The unification of Primary Care records in Ontario... all culminating in : one healthcare record for all Ontarians.

Now... where is that Consent module?

[Chris Johnston]

@Debra-Turnbull said in Ontario Launches Provincial Primary Care Record Procurement:

Now... where is that Consent module?

Working on it! I have a date to chat with the lead researcher behind the GRIIS CLARET project in August - one of many irons in the fire, warming up nicely