CSA, Canada Health Infoway Team for International Health IT Standards

October 31, 2006 // Published as a news service by IHS

These standards will help authorized health care providers share a patient's medical information electronically, in order to provide better health care services, CSA said.

"Hospitals, clinics and pharmacies need to share up-to-date patient information quickly, easily and with complete confidentiality to improve health care," said Richard Alvarez, Infoway's president and CEO.

"With Canada's vast geography and hundreds of thousands of care providers - served by thousands of separate health information systems - standards are essential to helping ensure that the systems can communicate with each other," he said.

"There is a recognized need for health information technology (IT) standards that support interoperability - that is, standards that work with each other seamlessly," said Pat Keindel, president of CSA.

"In the health care field, clear and effective standards make a genuine difference in people's lives. This agreement is consistent with CSA's commitment to provide leadership in standardization within the field of health care technology and to enhancing the safe and effective application of health care standards for the benefit of patients and medical professionals."

Under the MoU, Infoway will play a substantial role in the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) Health Informatics committee. Infoway will work closely with CSA to support the Canadian committees to jointly promote and facilitate the harmonization of Canadian standards with international standards in alignment with the work of the ISO/TC 215 Health Informatics Committee.

The use of consistent standards on national and international levels helps promote greater adoption of standards by technology solutions providers, according to CSA. These standards also assist vendors by minimizing the need to adapt their products for different markets, making it more cost-effective to develop their technology offerings.

Closer ties with CSA are in line with Infoway's increased standards efforts. In April, Infoway launched the Infoway Standards Collaborative, which focuses on standards development, education and training, implementation support, maintenance and conformance, and also acts as a liaison with other standards development organizations.

Source: Canadian Standards Association (CSA).