Governments must coordinate on mobile health technology, executives say

Federal and provincial governments and their health agencies must make a concentrated effort to help Canada’s health care system realise the promise of mobile wireless technologies, a panel of telco executives said at the Wireless Canada Technology Showcase in Ottawa Tuesday. Real-time treatments via video, timely access to patients’ medical records, lower wait-times and improved patient understanding of treatments are some of the benefits Canadians could reap from mobile health, panellists said at the conference hosted by the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association. “Mobile health is just another application and the parts are quite simple,” Ante Rupcic, vice-president of core networks at Wind Mobile, said. But there remain several hurdles for Canada to collectively overcome and “make mobile health a reality,” Rupcic said. Chief among them is convincing doctors and various levels of government to get on board, the executives said. Right now, about a quarter of Canadian doctors typically use the type of electronic patient records that facilitate “m-health” and only about a fifth of Canadian hospitals rely on them exclusively, Rupcic said. As the administrators of Canada's healthcare, it is up to the provincial governments, provincial health agencies, and their federal counterparts, to get the ball rolling, Daniel Proulx, chief technology officer at Quebecor Media Inc. subsidiary, Videotron Ltée, said. “If the people want to see this happen, they should ask the business process owner ... but if there’s no interest from the major stakeholder in that process, it just won’t happen,” Proulx said. CWTA president and former New Brunswick premier Bernard Lord, who moderated the panel, agreed that the onus is on government. “Because health is a provincial jurisdiction, ultimately provincial governments have to step up, either to say yes they will do or at least that they will not block others that will do it,” Lord said. “And the federal government would have to take the same approach, that they would not block provinces that decide to innovate using technology in health care.” He noted that governments are often wary of making major changes to health care, which comes from a fear related to the public’s potential reaction. It is important to educate the public about the security of modern wireless networks, which unduly suffer from concerns about security, the executives said. “We have to get past the perception that perhaps people are listening in on our conversations or can read over the wire,” Bruce Rodin, vice-president of wireless technology at Bell Canada Enterprises Inc., said. “The risks associated with device management or application management are no different if they’re over a mobile system or a landline system,” Bob Berner, Rogers’ Communications Inc.’s vice-president of networks and chief technology officer, added. news@thewirereport.ca

Governments must coordinate on mobile health technology, executives say

News | September 21, 2011

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