Blog: Infoway Connects

Posted on September 8, 2020 by Myriam Brel

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 parents alike.

Posted on September 1, 2020 by Dr. Rashaad Bhyat

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 pandemic thus highlighting the importance of health literacy.

Posted on August 25, 2020 by Anne Baldwin 

Archimedes said it best: the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. For physician Dr. Jeffrey Steed, this is all too true when it comes to prescribing. Based in Coaldale, AB, his clinic was looking for more efficient ways to get prescriptions to pharmacies.

Posted on August 18, 2020 by Nancy Gupta

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 employment and concerns around the virus itself have contributed to rising mental health concerns among young Canadians.

Posted on August 10, 2020 by Katie Bryski and Dana Riley

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 COVID-19 among Black populations, due in part to the compounding effects of anti-Black racism and its subsequent impact on the social determinants of health.

Posted on July 27 by Dr. Rashaad Bhyat

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 work of years in just a few weeks.

Posted on July 21, 2020 by Michael Green

Follow @MGreenonHealth

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 to their personal health information and to digital health tools and services.

Posted on July 14, 2020 by Bobby Gheorghiu, Waldo Beauséjour and Nicole Simms

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 COVID-19 and climate change shows in microcosm the interconnections between health systems and natural systems.

Posted on July 8, 2020 by Nancy Gupta and Sukirtha Tharmalingam

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.

Posted on June 30, 2020 by Katie Bryski and Ellie Yu

It’s a brave new world in health care. Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, Canadians have turned increasingly to virtual care. According to Infoway’s ongoing tracking survey, virtual visits accounted for almost half of health care visits in May 2020. But what does this shift to virtual care mean for patients and how patients engage with the health care system?

Posted on June 23 by Darek Szadkowski

We all know the old adage that “the customer is always right.” The philosophy of customer centricity takes the idea further: it means working in a way that focuses first on providing a positive customer experience. To realize this philosophy, PrescribeIT^® has established the Product Excellence team, responsible for end-to-end product and workflow excellence to ensure market adoption and sustainability, while also ensuring and improving patient safety.

Posted on June 16, 2020 by Nancy Gupta and Simon Hagens

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

Posted on June 8, 2020 by Katie Bryski

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 assurance, I felt the realization slowly build. You don’t understand why I’m upset.

Posted on June 2, 2020 by Anne Baldwin 

When PrescribeIT^® launched in Lethbridge, AB, in February 2018, it was the first community in the province to use the e-prescribing service. It was also among the first in the country. As early adopters, Lethbridge prescribers and pharmacists had a unique opportunity to help make the service the best it could be, a prospect they actively took up.

“We were one of the initial PrescribeIT^® users,” says Dr. David Steward, a physician with Family Medical Centre in Lethbridge. “We tested it and tried to help alleviate some of the challenges that were initially there.”

Posted on May 26, 2020 by Seema Nayani 

Gone are the days when clinicians practiced at only one specific site. Currently, many work at a few different sites part-time, or even as a fill-in or relief. Like many of my colleagues, I provide patient care at a few different sites as a community pharmacist.

Posted on May 19, 2020 by Katie Bryski

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.

Posted on May 12, 2020 by Katie Bryski

Have you ever wondered where a work day has gone? A few minutes troubleshooting here and there can add up with astonishing speed. In a busy clinic, those small diversions carry a heavy weight.

Posted on May 4, 2020 by Katie Bryski and Dr. Rashaad Bhyat

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 physical distancing. In our last blog post, we discussed some of the factors behind Canada’s rapid adoption of virtual care. In this follow-up, let’s dive a little deeper and see how a virtual care appointment might unfold.

Posted on April 28, 2020 by Katie Bryski and Dr. Rashaad Bhyat

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 health care right now, Canadians are finding that it is business as virtual.