TORONTO – At the recent Charting the Future of Drug Policy in Canada conference, the Honourable Jane Philpott, Minister of Health, talked about the important role that Infoway’s pan-Canadian e-prescribing service, known as PrescribeIT, can play in delivering the Government of Canada’s four pillars approach to drug policy.

“Budget 2016 provided $40 million to Canada Health Infoway to work with provinces and territories to develop an electronic prescribing system that could be useful in capturing prescribing data electronically,” she said. “This would have the advantage of capturing all prescriptions issued by doctors, not just what was dispensed.”

Infoway’s PrescribeIT service will provide for the secure electronic transmission of a prescription from a prescriber to a patient’s pharmacy of choice. This nationally scaled service will reduce the use of paper prescriptions, enhance patient safety and facilitate better health outcomes for Canadians.

“Planning is well underway for PrescribeIT, with clinicians and healthcare leaders as committed as we are to improving patient safety by making the transition from paper to secure, digital transmission of prescriptions to ensure the right people are taking the right medications,” said Michael Green (pictured), president and CEO, Canada Health Infoway. “Infoway will engage the Canadian healthcare industry to help deliver this service starting with an Expression of Interest to be released early next month.”

“When properly implemented, e-prescribing reduces the possibility of errors and reduces back-and-forth communication between healthcare providers,” said Perry Eisenschmid, CEO of the Canadian Pharmacists Association. “We look forward to working with Canada Health Infoway to support the development and roll out of PrescribeIT, which we believe will help improve workflow, and most importantly, patient safety.”

About Canada Health Infoway

Infoway helps to improve the health of Canadians by working with partners to accelerate the development, adoption and effective use of digital health across Canada. Through our investments, we help deliver better quality and access to care and more efficient delivery of health services for patients and clinicians. Infoway is an independent, not-for-profit organization funded by the federal government.