Our committees and task forces connect our members with future partners.

Co-Chairs: Aaron Berk (KPMG), Kathryn Hughes (TELUS Health) and Peter Jones (Microsoft Canada)

Mandate:

To promote investment in health ICT and represent the interests of the Canadian health ICT industry to government, key decision makers and opinion leaders.

• Execute on specific advocacy activities to promote the interest of the broader membership aligned to the priorities identified in the strategic plan.
• Meet one-on-one with Ministers of Health (Federal and Provincial) to promote investment in health ICT.
• Support the provincial Ministers of Health through collaboration and information sharing with other Ministers, government officials, decision-makers and opinion leaders to promote Technation Health’s priorities.
• Open up channels for dialogue between senior public servants, decision-makers in the broader health sector (e.g. regional CEO’s and CIO’s), opinion leaders (e.g. medical and hospital associations), and the Health ICT industry
• Organize opportunities for the membership to engage directly with key decision makers and politicians (e.g. Queen’s Park Days, Provincial eHealth Briefings etc.)

Objectives:

• Effectively influence public policy:
  • Deliver ‘Queen’s Park Day’ style events in BC, AB and ON – others
  • Target advocacy work on advancing the adoption of TECHNATION Health’s priority innovative technologies:
    1. Virtual Care
    2. Cloud Computing
    3. Advanced Analytics/AI/ML
    4. Consumer Health
    5. IOT/Mobility
  • Create TECHNATION Health positions on each of the five areas. Positions could over areas such as: patient/provider/system benefits, ROI, facts/myths, practical steps, blockers, recommendations etc.
  • Identify policy blockers and barriers and address at political and senior decision-making levels.

• Improve public & private sector procurement:
  • Continued work of the Procurement Task Force to collaborate with the Public Sector to seek methods of procurement innovation.
  • Develop TECHNATION Health positions on large-scale EMR refresh strategies and procurement – having a large scale view point
  • Collaboration with Advocacy committee to elevate the procurement conversation to political layers.

Measurement:

• Identify influence plan (metric: documented strategy)
• Execute on stated influence activity (metrics: # of sr.-level meetings, completion of “Queen’s Park Days”)
• Creation of position papers (metrics: # of papers)
• Influence outcomes – when possible to report on the how the activities of the committee actually moved the needle on policy decisions

Chair: Gavin Tong (Accenture)

Mandate:

To create policy recommendations that will help shape the direction of Canadian healthcare systems interoperability standards, and to socialize those recommendations with government agencies and ministries to influence their procurement processes.

• To present a unified industry voice and consultation vehicle for government, associations and policy makers and standard setting bodies.
• To assist the vendor community to become more knowledgeable about standards and interoperability issues and solutions and to share this knowledge and expertise.
• Develop skills and knowledge exchange amongst the members and the wider informatics community.
• To formulate positions on issues that may arise with respect to standards and regulations, and undertake work to establish how best to address and resolve these issues.
• To promote and facilitate the establishment of national functionality standards, conformance testing and certification processes, including privacy and security issues, so as to facilitate a “level playing field” for all vendors predicated on quality assurance for the marketplace.
• To ensure the development of secure electronic sharing of patient information (with appropriate patient and physician consent) between vendor systems through the use of Canadian and international interoperability standards.
• To help members adopt internationally accepted standards to allow Canadian companies to sell abroad.

Objectives:

• Shape provincial & federal ICT standards/regulation:
  • ISC to follow through on national survey recommendations to advance TECHNATION’s position on Canadian Interoperability Standards.
  • Grow the relevance of ISC through additional members and partnerships with other standards bodies.
  • Other areas to target include: consumer health, certification, patient safety, credentialing initiatives, devices, personalized medicine etc.

Measurement:

• Identify ISC priorities and plan (metric: documented strategy)
• Execute on stated activity (metrics: # of events)
• Creation of position papers (metrics: # of papers)
• ISC outcomes – when possible to report on the how the activities of the committee actually moved the needle on standards and regulatory decisions

Task Forces and Special Interest Groups:

• TECHNATION Health (ISC) – Interoperability Standards Recommendations Task Force –Terms of Reference