Canada - World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe

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Health systems in transition Canada
Table 4.6
Use of health IT by primary care physicians (% of physicians), 2009
Electronic patient medical records
Routine electronic access to patient
test results
Routine electronic prescribing
of medication
Routine electronic alerts prompting
problem with drug dose or interaction
Routine electronic ordering of
laboratory tests
Routine electronic entry of clinical notes
Computerized capacity to generate list
of patients by diagnosis
Computerized capacity to generate list
of patients overdue for tests or
preventative care
Australia 95 93 93 92 86 92 93 95 94
Canada 37 41 27 20 18 30 37 22 25
France 68 36 57 43 40 60 20 19 24
Sweden 94 91 93 58 81 89 74 41 49
UK 96 89 89 93 35 97 90 89 86
US 46 59 40 37 38 42 42 29 30
Source: Schoen et al. (2009).
Although data are very limited on the use of health IT in hospital settings,
it does appear that the adoption and use of ICT in Canadian hospitals is also
limited. In a domestic survey of hospitals in five provinces and two territories,
Urowitz et al. (2008) found that a bare majority had some sort of EHRs while
only a small minority (2.4%) had records with an electronic content between
91% and 100%.
The WHO’s more recent set of profiles on e-health in 114 participating
countries paints a somewhat more positive picture of the state of health
information in Canada, although the WHO (2011a) did not attempt a numeric
assessment or comparison of country performance. Although a report by
the Auditor General of Canada (2009) provides a limited but largely positive
assessment of the accountability performance of Canada Health Infoway, there
remains an obvious need for a rigorous analysis of the extent and effectiveness
of health IT in Canada.
Computerized capacity to generate lists
of all medications taken by patient