Blog

A new school year can be exciting — and stressful. Academic anxieties, bullying, romances and peer pressure add up to considerable weight on young shoulders. Heading back to the classroom during a pandemic only heightens that stress, for kids and...

Physical distancing, social circles, contact tracing, R0 numbers…over the past few months, we’ve adapted quickly to a wide range of new terms and concepts in order to stay healthy. For many Canadians, this information is largely new, the COVID-19...

Growing up is hard to do, especially online. Adolescence has always brought challenges, but the COVID-19 pandemic has added substantial stress to the lives of youth and young adults across Canada. Physical distancing, uncertainty around schooling and...

A virus may not discriminate on its own, but systemic inequities mean that COVID-19 has disproportionately impacted racialized groups. Data from the United States and the United Kingdom show higher rates of negative health outcomes and deaths related to...

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, I’ve been struck by the rapidity of events. This has been a fast-moving virus, but the response to it has been just as swift. In digital health, strong collaboration and leadership have helped to accomplish the policy...

We are pleased to publish our 2019-2020 Annual Report – Connecting Canadians Through Health Care Innovation . I hope you will take some time to review it to learn about the collective progress we’ve made across the country to improve Canadians’ access...

What happens when a pandemic meets a heat wave? It’s a question that many jurisdictions are asking themselves this summer, weighing the need for emergency cooling centres against the continued need for physical distancing. This intersection between...

When disease is suspected, how long does it take a patient to go from biopsy to diagnosis and treatment plan? It depends where you live. Across Canada, it can take anywhere from days, weeks, or months.

It’s a brave new world in health care. Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, Canadians have turned increasingly to virtual care.

How are you holding up? No, really, how are you feeling? Specifically, in terms of your mental health?

It’s unsettling, going unseen. Several years ago, I sat in an exam room with Kleenex scrunched in my fist. The clinician had just suggested a common procedure — except it wouldn’t be routine for me. Quite the opposite. As she did her best to offer...

It’s been nine weeks since I came home and stayed home. In that time, we’ve seen extraordinary growth of virtual care across Canada. As our health system faces unprecedented challenges, virtual care has proven to be an invaluable tool.

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, virtual care is filling a larger role in health care. Telephones, video chats and secure messaging allow clinics to keep their digital doors open while ensuring that clinicians and patients stay safe and maintain...

It’s an uncertain and frightening time for health care. The COVID-19 virus has brought unprecedented new challenges for the health system; we are all in uncharted territory as we attempt to flatten the curve. But while it isn’t business as usual for...

In February, the Canadian Medical Association, working with the College of Family Physicians of Canada and the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, released their Virtual Care Task Force’s report entitled “ Virtual Care Recommendations...

The World Health Organization (WHO) established World Health Day in 1948 to raise awareness of the importance of health. On this World Health Day, that simple message – health is important – has never been more relevant.

Health care organizations need the ability to share health information consistently and efficiently, and the current COVID-19 public health emergency illustrates why.

In 2014 Infoway published “ Understanding the Gap Between Desire for and Use of Consumer Health Solutions .” This analysis revealed that while eight in 10 Canadians wanted access to their personal health information, only four per cent had accessed it...

Much of the world’s attention since we began the new decade has been focused on the identification and spread of the Coronavirus, now known as COVID-19. While the World Health Organization (WHO) has not yet declared it a global pandemic, the virus has...

According to a recent study, nearly nine in 10 Canadians consult the internet for health information. ^[1] Unfortunately, “Dr. Google” isn’t always a trustworthy source. False and misleading information can put people at risk, sometimes with...