In a recent interview with Healthcare IT Today, Aidan Lee, Director of the Certification Program at OntarioMD, and Matt Leduc, Director of Products, Integrations, and Service Management, shed light on the evolving landscape of electronic medical records (EMRs) and the state of interoperability in the healthcare sector. Their unique perspective as key figures in Ontario’s healthcare technology field offers valuable insights into the trends and challenges facing the industry.
Driving Compliance and Conformance
Lee, responsible for the EMR certification program at OntarioMD, outlined their mission, which includes compliance, conformance, defining clinical workflows, and setting requirements for vendors and their products. The program plays a pivotal role in maintaining the industry standards and expectations. Lee emphasized the importance of continuing to evolve these standards and how they are expressed for clinicians in their daily practice.
“Our job is to ensure that all the certified EMRs meet a certain set of expectations,” explained Lee. “To be clear, we don’t set these expectations. What we do is uphold the expectations on behalf of others like Ontario Health in Ontario, which is an agent of the Ministry of Health. Meet those expectations and you can participate in the ecosystem.”
One of the expectations is interoperability.
The Challenge of Interoperability
Leduc is responsible for helping vendors integrate with provincial services and part of that integration requires health data to be interoperable. Without that, EMRs will not be able to take advantage of the centralized systems designed and managed by OntarioMD that make the day-to-day operations for Ontario-based clinics easier.
For example, OntarioMD manages OLIS, a central clearinghouse and repository for lab requests in the province. EMRs that integrate with OLIS make it easy for their physician users to see the lab results for the patients they manage sooner, which in turn results in better care.
“OLIS has been a tremendous success story,” stated Leduc. “The ability for almost every family physician’s office in Ontario to get lab results, whether they were requested by the physician or not, is incredible. A much younger version of me would say we have achieved the impossible. We have achieved all of our wildest dreams from 15 to 20 years ago when we first set down the path of interoperability. Of course that finish line has moved substantially forward. We have a long way to go.”
When asked about the progress of interoperability, Lee acknowledged the significant headway made in terms of standards and their use. The adoption of FHIR-based standards in Ontario is a notable development. FHIR-based messaging is the cornerstone of the new Ontario digital health drug repository which, like OLIS, allows any family physician to see a list of medications for a patient regardless of whether the physician was the one who prescribed it.
Looking Ahead
Both Lee and Leduc agreed that success in the next one to two years would involve practical advancements. Leduc discussed the importance of improving existing services like OLIS and Health Report Manager. He would like to see these services made more accessible for physicians. Additionally, he believes the successful introduction of features like the patient summary, electronic lab result ordering, and drug integrations is essential.
Lee highlighted the need to address the specific needs of clinicians and determine the purpose of technologies like AI. Lee believes that we need to focus on providing practical applications of the technology that actually solves a problem for healthcare providers.
They shed light on the evolving landscape of electronic medical records (EMRs) and the state of interoperability in the healthcare sector. Their unique perspective as key figures in Ontario’s healthcare technology field offers valuable insights into the trends and challenges facing the industry.
Watch the interview with Aidan Lee and Matt Leduc to learn:
- Where they see the greatest promise for AI in healthcare
- How they would like to see the increased use of virtual visits and virtual technology in Ontario
- What new standards and technologies OntarioMD is working on
Learn more about OntarioMD at https://www.ontariomd.ca/
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Another great interview on an important topic! Thanks Colin!