This article originally appeared in the September/October 2020 issue of the Ontario Medical Review magazine.
Charting the future of digital and virtual care in a pandemic
by Sarah Hutchison, LLM, MHSc
Chief Executive Officer, OntarioMD
More than 3,000 clinicians, system stakeholders and vendors from across Canada and around the world engaged in the recent OntarioMD Digital Health and Virtual Care Day. The conference was held virtually for the first time since it was originally launched as the EMR: Every Step Conference in 2012. Presenters and participants at this year’s event heard about and shared ideas for the path forward in digital and virtual health care in a pandemic environment.
The conference featured many real-life examples of how the system has demonstrated ingenuity and resiliency since COVID-19 took hold in March 2020. And we learned that there is still a lot to do in order to make health care a truly seamless experience for patients.
In his keynote address, Matt Anderson, President and CEO of Ontario Health, said unleashing the potential of digital care and virtual care is an essential component in bringing our increasingly complex health care system together.
The mandate of the new Ontario Health Teams (OHTs) to link primary care, home care and specialty care at the local and regional levels would not be possible without proper digital infrastructure, he said, and the technical solutions the OHTs will turn to are “wide open.”
It’s essential, he warned, that Ontario’s health funding infrastructure changes as health care systems are integrated.
“How do we make sure that the funding models are in place that align properly to what we’re trying to do as we change the system and support these kinds of technologies and information exchange?” he said, noting that under the current Ontario funding model, hospitals still receive more money as the volume of patients crossing their thresholds grows.
Former federal health minister Dr. Jane Philpott, now special advisor to the Ontario Government on the new Ontario Health Data Platform (OHDP), said the pandemic has propelled us to do things we wanted to do for decades in virtual care delivery and remote care.
“We’ve seen how we can realize even more benefit for patients because of what the pandemic has pushed us to do,” she said, but added that the pandemic has also revealed cracks in the digital health landscape.
“The pandemic has led to the tragic exposure of some of our worst habits around health data,” said Dr. Philpott. She noted that public health legislation in Canada relating to data is weak, with no uniform data standards across provinces, and across the country, mostly as a result of insufficient public health investment.
“Early on, academics and journalists were way ahead of (pandemic) data visualization modelling,” she said. “We’re still struggling with the fact we don’t have well-integrated systems.”
Dr. Philpott called for a single digital identifier for health, a “one patient, one health record” system to link data in the best interests of patients, and untangle what she described as a “chaotic data jungle.”
At the outset, the OHDP will link health data sets for the purpose of clinical research, not primary care, she said, although there is an openness within the Ministry of Health to bringing primary care data into the platform.
“By doing that, we will open up a new world of opportunity for learning the kinds of lessons that will ultimately have clinical impact,” she said.
The OHDP was created last spring to deliver more consistent population data with the goal of improving decision-making and supporting efforts to better detect, plan for, and respond to COVID-19.
Dr. Philpott remarked that the Premier’s Office has issued several “challenge questions,” for the OHDP, using big data to answer questions in the areas of:
She noted that this research “will allow more inclusive access to data on COVID-19, and will provide the largest collection of health data in the country.”
The annual OntarioMD conference surpassed the previous attendance records of our former in-person conference, and is still Canada’s largest and most influential clinician-centred digital health learning and networking conference series.
Digital Health and Virtual Care Day is poised to take up the mantle by offering a convenient, high-quality, accredited learning experience for physicians. The conference went fully digital as a result of pandemic physical distancing measures. For those who may have missed it, view recordings of the keynotes and multiple sessions.
Topics include:
Access the full program, with links to the recordings.
Whether in person, or virtually, OntarioMD looks forward to connecting with you all again at next year’s conference, which will be an opportunity to review our progress in connecting our health care system digitally. Until that time, OntarioMD has more virtual learning planned throughout the year conducted by our knowledgeable staff or our Physician Peer Leaders, who are digital health experts and early adopters of virtual care tools.
We want to keep the dialogue on digital health and virtual care going throughout the year and are interested in which topics you would find most valuable for your patients or your practice. Send your ideas to info@ontariomd.com.
If you would like some help or advice with digital health systems, virtual care tools or your EMR, you can always request support from support@ontariomd.com.
OntarioMD is at your service!