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Awards
COACH and ITAC Health announce CHIA
winners
 TORONTO – The 2010
COACH and ITAC Health award winners, and the Steven Huesing Scholarship recipients, were honoured at the sixth annual Canadian Health Informatics Awards (CHIA)
Gala in Toronto on Nov. 18. COACH and ITAC Health presented awards
to an array of leading-edge projects and companies, as well as to
talented individuals who are advancing Canadian healthcare through the
use of information technologies.
The winners are:
• Community-Based Physician Leader/Innovator (Presented by the Canadian
Medical Association & Practice Solutions Ltd.) – Dr. Jeremy Theal
Dr. Theal (in picture second from left) brings an “infectious”
commitment and passion to leveraging health IT to improve patient care
at North York General Hospital (NYGH), in Toronto. As the physician lead
for the hospital’s eCare Computerized Provider Order Entry (CPOE) system
over the last 3.5 years, he engaged 80+ front-line, hospital-based
physicians to assist in the design of patient views and order sets and
reached out to the other scopes of practice at NYGH to take a true
inter-professional approach.
In the nominator’s words, “Quoting evidence from the literature, he has
rallied NYGH clinicians to support CPOE by convincing them that such a
system can truly improve efficiency of care, reduce inpatient
complications and save patient lives.”
On top of this, he spearheaded a Canadian first – the creation of a
library of more than 300 CPOE order sets that integrate
regularly-updated, contextual evidence from medical literature into the
physician’s ordering workflow and are customized to NYGH clinical
practice. He again assembled a quality and patient-outcome driven
inter-professional team to carry out this work.
(Pictured: Rohit Prakash
of Practice Solutions, Dr. Jeremy Theal, William (Bill) Pascal of the CMA,
Maureen Charlebois, COACH Board.)
• Best Innovation in Technology and Learning (Presented by Elluminate)
– University of British Columbia Faculty of Medicine’s Distributed
Medical Education Program
Launched in 2004 in response to a shortage of doctors in British
Columbia, particularly in rural areas, the Distributed Medical Education
Program (DMEP) doubled undergraduate class sizes three years ahead of
schedule and extended UBC’s medical program to medical learners and
faculty in all regions of the province.
DMEP is now recognized as a reference model for simultaneous distributed
medical education, enabling emerging physicians to train and remain in
historically underserviced communities. UBC is the first medical school
in North America to leverage highly integrated and scalable audio visual
and collaboration technologies as part of the core strategy for DMEP.
These technologies, including videoconferencing, picture archiving and
simulation, enable simultaneous and asynchronous distributed study in
all courses. Clerks, residents and post-graduate medical students can
train under direct supervision of clinical faculty in patient care
settings and participate in half-day seminars at clinical sites across
the province.
By 2015, DMEP will have graduated 1,750 medical doctors and employed
more than 1,500 clinical faculty. DMEP was developed in collaboration
with the Government of British Columbia, University of Northern BC,
University of Victoria and provincial regional health authorities.
Today, it encompasses a fourth campus at UBC Okanagan, scheduled to go
live in the spring of 2011.
• Emerging Leader in Health Informatics (Presented by Courtyard Group)
– Dr. Jane Nassif
Dr. Nassif is a visionary, dedicated to showcasing the capacity of
health informatics (HI) on a local, provincial and national scale. Her
efforts, along with a supportive team at Niagara Region, have
contributed to significant efficiencies, cost savings, and innovation
through the development of the Protocol for Electronic Clinic Systems (PECS)
used to support pandemic H1N1 vaccine delivery.
The introduction and availability of this clinic management program
changed the delivery of vaccine to the general public for the first time
in decades. Many Ontario health units gained the ability to track
clients, inventory and clinic statistics electronically with PECS. In
2009, with the emergence of the pandemic H1N1 influenza, the Ministry of
Health and Long-Term Care endorsed PECS for use in Ontario health units
for the 2009 H1N1 immunization season in which Dr. Nassif was an
instrumental partner.
PECS was vital to promoting and developing the field of HI within public
health. PECS introduced a system that could be implemented
simultaneously across normal jurisdictional boundaries and allowed for
standardized data collection across health units. Beyond the utility
during H1N1, the introduction of PECS proved, to many health units, that
these systems can be functional in their environment and bring the
delivery of public health services to entirely new levels. As a result
of the PECS introduction, and Dr. Nassif’s ability to build
relationships across health units, the delivery of mass immunizations in
Ontario has finally reached the 21st century.
Dr. Nassif continues to receive requests to present this work at
provincial and federal agencies and national conferences.
• Excellence in Canadian Telehealth – University Health Network Telehealth Program
The UHN Telehealth Program, launched in 2002, has pioneered telehealth
integration into complex clinical care environments including organ
transplantation and home telemonitoring for diabetes, heart failure, and
hemodialysis. The program team has achieved international recognition
through excellence in clinical care, collaborative dissemination of
knowledge and advancement of telehealth technology through research and
innovation.
The core goal: ensuring equitable access and quality of specialized
service to patients in rural and remote areas by eliminating travel
limitations. The core services include live videoconferencing over
secure networks for:
• Patient care
• Family visiting
• Professional education
• Case conferencing.
The team has 16 peer-reviewed publications and 60+ abstracts
specifically related to telehealth adoption and technological innovation
and team members are frequently invited to speak at conferences and
regularly host Canadian and international visitors.
The many program successes include serving as the pilot site for Ontario
Telemedicine Network projects, including desktop videoconferencing and
personal telemedicine pilots. This resulted in the program being awarded
the 2009 Canadian Society of Telehealth Technology Innovation Award.
• Innovation in the Adoption of Health Informatics – Cancer Surgery Alberta Web Surgery Medical Record (WebSMR)
The Alberta Web Surgical Medical Record (SMR), the first known
electronic surgical synoptic reporting system, is a success story both
in terms of patient care and clinician uptake.
Today, 75% of Alberta surgeons who are eligible to perform cancer
surgery, use the WebSMR system of pre-formatted templates, to document
cancer surgeries in lieu of dictating an operative report. This allows
them to obtain their real-time outcomes on a daily basis, which helps
them determine the course of treatment and follow-up, future educational
and training strategies, the need for guideline reviews and updates,
waiting times, standard of care in a specific geographic location and
more.
Alberta surgeons developed WebSMR in response to the difficulty in
obtaining real-time data for outcomes analysis. The tool is now being
implemented in selected Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec and Nova Scotia cancer
centres by the pan-Canadian Synoptic Reporting Tools Project and under
Cancer Surgery Alberta (CSA) leadship.
What’s behind the Alberta WebSMR success? Signficant factors are:
• committed leadership,
• cancer surgery champions and visionaries,
• excellent administrative and support staff; and
• rigorous employment of change management strategies.
CSA, a provinical program of the former Alberta Cancer Board (now
Alberta Health Services, Cancer Care) implemented WebSMR with support
from Canada Health Infoway’s Innovation and Adoption investment
portfolio.
• Leadership in the Field of Health Informatics Award – Dr. Francis Lau
Dr. Lau’s wide-ranging contributions, spanning health information system
evaluation, terminology standards, palliative care informatics and
health informatics (HI) education, reflect his integrated, collaborative
approach to eHealth so that all participants are part of advancing
Canadian HI. As a mentor and an educator, Dr. Lau creates a nurturing
environment for students using experiential and collaborative research
for a life-long learning mindset.
His current leadership with the eHealth Observatory at University of
Victoria (UVic) shows how innovative health information science
methodologies can evaluate the effects of the electronic health
information system across the life cycle. In his words: “The aim of our
research is to engage the healthcare community to help us create and use
new knowledge systems that focus on adding value to patient care and
safety.”
Career Highlights
• Clinical informatics research in palliative and end-of-life care,
including establishing the largest known anonymized Palliative
Performance Scale assessment database
• Publishing, with Canada Health Infoway, an evidence-based Health
Information Systems conceptual framework, which Infoway adopted to
evaluate the impacts of electronic health record (EHR) implementation
initiatives across Canada and a meta-systematic review paper that is now
used nationally as THE guide to design EHR evaluation studies and
methods
• Leading the PhD/post-doctoral/practitioner research training
initiative and collaborative distributed MSc program in HI with four
western Canadian university partners, utilizing innovative e-learning
• Key leader in the growth of UVic’s School of Health Information where
he is an active scholar, valued teacher and former Director
• Telehealth Technology Innovation (Presented by TELUS Health Solutions)
– MBTelehealth
MBTelehealth (MBT) is a leader in the development and advancement in the
use of telehealth technologies. As Manitoba’s telehealth network, MBT
has grown from 22 to almost 100 sites, and received multiple accolades
including the Canadian Society of Telehealth (CST) Award of Excellence
in 2007. Setting up services with technology in combination with
clinical expertise, in a sustainable way, sets MBTelehealth apart.
Examples of MBTelehealth’s many innovative accomplishments include:
• Work with the Canadian National Institute for the Blind on counselling
sessions for Aboriginals with vision loss caused by diabetic retinopathy
to improve sound quality and provide session facilitators with the
ability to see patient facial expressions;
• An initiative at the Health Sciences Centre Renal Program in Winnipeg
where five specialty services are provided by a social worker,
pharmacist, nurse, physician and dietician via videoconferencing from
the centre to the patient’s local health facility during a single
telehealth appointment;
• A Store and Forward Pilot for dermatology consults, with the intent of
reducing wait times and improving family physician/specialist
communications and services for patients;
• Working with staff and providers at the Health Sciences Centre
neonatal intensive-care unit and Telestroke program to implement
standards for emergency consultations for an unstable neonate or a
patient experiencing a CVA.
• Steven Huesing Undergraduate Scholarship – Ashley Wilson, Co-operative Honours Bachelor of Applied Health
Sciences, Health Studies Program, University of Waterloo.
Awarded for:
The kind of spirit, dedication and innovation that Founding COACH
President Steven Huesing brought to the field of health informatics
(HI), as demonstrated by an undergraduate who is currently enrolled in a
HI or a related program at an accredited post-secondary institution.
• Steven Huesing Graduate Scholarship – Pavel Roshanov, Health Research Methodology Program, Dept of Clinical
Epidemiology and Biostatistics, McMaster University
Awarded for:
The kind of spirit, dedication and innovation that Founding COACH
President Steven Huesing brought to the field of health informatics
(HI), as demonstrated by a graduate student who is currently enrolled in
a HI or a related program at an accredited post-secondary institution.
• Company of the Year: GE Healthcare
• Corporate Citizenship, Multi-National Company: Agfa Healthcare
• Corporate Citizenship, Small to Medium Enterprises: EMIS Inc.
• Healthcare Transformation: Agfa Healthcare
• Project Implementation Team: GE Healthcare and VANOC
Recipients of other industry awards presented before the gala were also
recognized:
Canada Health Infoway Standards Collaborative Peer Awards
Canadian Health Information Management Association (CHIMA) Pinnacle
Awards.
Posted December 2, 2010
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