Email the Editor    Email a Friend    Print this Page 

The government agency behind linking all health care providers in Ontario through a dedicated network plans to recruit hesitant physicians, consolidate information, and allow citizens access to their records from home in the next five years, according to an announcement.

The Toronto-based Smart Systems for Health Agency (SSHA) marked their five-year anniversary by proclaiming their objectives for the next five years.  The agency's mission is the creation of an Electronic Health Record for every Ontarian.

To accomplish this, the agency has juggled various vendors in all shapes and sizes to create the Ontario Network for e-Health (ONE). The network allows mail between users and hosts 15 applications.

It's been adopted by every hospital in Ontario from Ajax to Zephyr and has reached 13,500 people located at 5,000 different sites. But with only eight per cent of physician offices connected, growth isn't moving fast enough, according to Bill Albino, chief executive officer for SSHA.

“I'd like to see it go much faster,” Albino told ITbusiness, “the sooner the electronic medical record is adopted right across the system, the better off we'll all be.”
Part of convincing more doctors to climb on board ONE is creating bulletproof network access control methods that are appropriate for the sensitive nature of private health information, he adds. ONE needs to be easily accessible for health care workers, but highly secure.

“We are constantly watching the network for intrusion,” Albino says. “With networks of our size, it does happen, but there's people watching at all times to make sure it is secure.”

To protect their province-wide IT infrastructure, SSHA uses a Authentication, Authorization and Audit (AAA) data management system. Physicians get on the network the same way they get  their golf club memberships – through a third-party reference.

A seven-character, case-sensitive password requires an alpha character for extra strength. Session times are limited to make sure valuable information isn't left on screen.

“We try to make sure the users who are getting on are the right users. We are very vigilant about that,” Albino says.

Security and air-tight access control is key as SSHA works toward allowing Ontarians access to their own health record to view, manage, and control whom and who can't see the information. The agency faces the same challenges as Google Health and Microsoft HealthVault, analysts say.

“Security is a big concern,” says Ross Armstrong, senior research analyst with London, Ont.-based Info-Tech Research Group. But “from a business perspective it makes sense to have records available online.”

To that end, SSHA took responsibility at the beginning of the year for the Master Patient Index (MPI). The index will take information from different hospitals and physician sites and crunch it down into one location – all critical information for the network are housed on two mirror datacenters in Markham and Streetsville, Ont.

“When a patient has a deadly disease, and that information has to get to the correct physician and the correct patient, you can't afford mistakes,” Albino says.

share: