 | | Maxim Armstrong
Economist, Canadian Industrial Outlook
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Demand for healthcare services is growing fast, and is expected to accelerate as the population ages. At the same time, provincial governments are now facing huge deficits, and as healthcare is the largest category of spending, it is more than likely that healthcare providers will have to find new solutions to meet growing demand. With the medical industry already facing shortages of skilled workers—a situation that is only expected to worsen as the baby-boomer generation of doctors starts to retire—the combination of growing demand and limited budgets is even more troubling. As a result, healthcare providers will have to improve their productivity if they are to eliminate the imbalance between demand and supply—and computer-based technology will play an important role in this difficult task.
There are actually many examples of innovations that have yet to be fully implemented in Canada. One example is electronic health records (EHR), with which doctors and pharmacists can access your whole health history, including prescriptions, test results and diagnoses, even if they were conducted by another practitioner in another region or province. The costs of implementing such a network are massive and it would require coordination between all participants, including provinces, hospitals, private doctors’ offices and pharmacists. They could however lead to improved productivity and savings by such things as avoiding double testing, reducing paper work and quickening the transfer of data and results. It can also improve the quality of care by diminishing the chances of mistakes, reducing miscommunication between practitioners and controlling compatibility between prescribed drugs. Furthermore, it can also reduce the illegal traffic of drugs by identifying duplicated prescriptions.
Telemedicine, which consists of providing the service remotely through telecommunication systems, is another example of a technology that can help to reduce regional disparities while reducing costs for governments. Indeed, this technology makes it possible for specialists to serve several regions from one central location, avoiding the multiplication of services and equipment. It could also reduce the number of people having to travel long distances for tests or procedures and could greatly benefit the economy of rural regions, as it could become easier to recruit qualified employees if access to health care was no longer an issue. Doctors are already increasingly using handheld devices to assist them in their practice. From remote patient monitoring to interactive demonstrations to displaying x-rays in high-definition, there are hundreds of applications specifically designed for doctors and nurses.
However, despite the many potential advantages of implementing technological upgrades to the healthcare system, the adoption rate in Canada remains low. For example, in the 2007 National Physician Survey, 58 per cent of physicians reported using only paper charts as their patient’s record system, 26 per cent were using a combination of electronic and paper charts and 10 per cent were using electronic only. Alberta and Manitoba were the provinces with the highest share of physicians using electronic records only at 22 and 16 per cent respectively, while Quebec and New Brunswick were at about 4 per cent. With such low adoption rates the potential for improvement is enormous.
That said, there are several reasons why Canadian healthcare providers have been slow to integrate these tools into their everyday practice. First, the start-up investment is significant. Second, there are concerns about issues like security, privacy, and reliability that need to be addressed. Also, as with any other technology, there will be a transition period in which workers will have to be trained and grow accustomed to using new technology in their work environment.
Although there are ongoing efforts by Canadian organisations, such as Canada Health Infoway, to assist in this transition and financially support new projects, Canada still has a long way to go to utilize the full potential of new technologies. But sooner or later, information technologies will become a part of the healthcare industry. As this occurs, information technology can be expected to make a significant contribution in resolving the imbalance between the needs and the means of healthcare.