E-health Leadership Toronto, Central

Lydia Lee's role
Leads e-health projects in the Toronto Central LHIN #7. She works with healthcare organizations (Health Service Providers) in the Toronto Central LHIN and GTA to effectively implement e-health projects.

Lydia said that there are three main projects that are important for nurses to know and where nursing has an opportunity to participate.

1. Discharge Planning also known as RMR project (Resource Matching and Referral Project)

If you work in an acute care surgical or GIM unit in downtown Toronto you already use this. It is an electronic discharge summary that is linked to referral agencies associated with the hospital ex. long term care, rehab sites and CCAC. Coming in the future will be the capacity to submit your discharge summary and then a report will be automatically generated giving you information on the type of patient that facility can except. Just imagine how efficient your discharge planning can be if you knew that a male bed was available at St.Johns Rehab facility and a female bed was available at West Park! The TCLHIN is currently investigating how they will role this out to other units and facilities and this concept will be adopted by the province.

2. Connecting GTA:

Wondering when you will be able to get information about your patient from the transfering healthcare facility? Connecting GTA is bringing you one step closer to doing this. Using a single web based portal/highway healthcare providers will have a secure and private access to patient information. It is not a universal electronic patient record, however the goal is to bring many of the different systems together into one common access location. For example lab results and discharge summaries will be included. Lydia said that nursing input will be key and is looking to organize working groups. Let me know if you are interested.

3. GTA West Diagnostic Repository:
Tired of looking at a faxed report of a patients imaging or arranging to get a CD of the image sent to your institution? As a Telemedicine Coordinator I am. There are many projects happening around the province and this project plans to link 24 hospitals imaging repositories (ie PACS) in the GTA area together.

Lydia will be sending me updates on these projects so I will keep you posted.

An unusual career path pays off

Here I am 2.5 years after posting my thoughts after my interview for a position as a Telemedicine Coordinator in "My Moments" blog where I expressed my anxiety about being considered a suitable candidate for a position within Nursing Informatics. An area I knew very little about at the time. What I have realized 2. 5 years later that the world of nursing informatics/Ehealth is vast and has tremendous opportunities. You need not know the definition of informatics or E-health to begin.

This blog will attempt to provide insight into what is happening in nursing and E-health within Toronto; Canada's largest city as part of an E-health peer-to-peer project with the Registered Nurses Association.

Please add comments and post links to your work in E-health.


Look forward to sharing,
Kambria