E-health: applying business process reengineering principles to healthcare in Canada

Healthcare in Canada is facing many problems. The most publicised symptoms are excessive waiting times for patients, lack of access, high cost of delivery and medical errors. e-health has been introduced as a potential solution for such problems. This research will explore the area of e-health and the technologies as well as the concepts that are included under its large umbrella. Bearing in mind that e-health is more than a set of technological applications, a business process reengineering (BPR) framework will be used to examine the application of particular BPR principles to address specific problems that are plaguing the Canadian healthcare system. The framework identifies the e-health technologies and processes that could best support the effective application of these BPR principles within a healthcare environment, as well as the key barriers impeding their implementation.