| dc.description.abstract | The internship that was completed at Canada Health Infoway in the summer of 2004 allowed the author to understand Infoway as a strategic investor and internal processes for program targets, project selection, funding models and investment planning exercises. The intent of Infoway’s investments and practices in jurisdictional level projects in targeted program areas is to influence and guide the jurisdictions for the purpose of the evolution of a pan-Canadian EHR. The role evolved into working directly with the Federal Healthcare Partnership to begin to define what role or relationship that federal healthcare service delivery projects should take within the pan-Canadian solution. There is national level work being done on standards development and adoption processes that the federal departments currently are not involved in. There were many problems and challenges in performing the work of collecting project information from the various departments, including budgets and planning phases. Project level analysis was done and documented for possible inclusion in Infoway’s investment planning exercises. The end result was some general guidelines and first steps to recommendations for the development of a formal relationship or engagement strategy between Infoway and the federal healthcare service delivery departments. This paper discusses challenges just as the flow of investment money; the difficulty in coordinating for departments that provide healthcare services to unique groups of people, that typically are not considered an ‘insured’ person under Canada’s Health Care Act. Recommendations are for the federal departments to improve coordination within their own organization to present a consolidated front to Infoway for participation in program specific projects that can lead to cross jurisdictional implementations, leveraged investments and cost saving for the federal departments. The federal departments need to develop some incentives for working across departments for a common project. Infoway needs to understand what the federal departments do and how they differ in their delivery of service from the provincial and territorial jurisdictions. One key recommendation in the analysis of this report is to actually take action and active steps toward achieving recommendations already mapped out after an analysis of federal level projects in April 2003. These actions have not been acted upon as of the time of this document. Another key finding is the necessity for Infoway to analyze the projects being undertaken within federal departments because they are complimentary to what Infoway is coordinating within other jurisdictions, and these projects, such as the Canadian Forces Hospital Information System, can also provide unique solutions that fit the criteria of easy replication and leverage investments | en_US |
