Andrew Szende and the development of the electronic Child Health Network (eCHN).

In 2007, Canada Health Infoway surveyed Canadians’ attitudes toward electronic health records (EHRs). Among the significant findings was the fact that 88% of respondents endorsed “the idea” of EHRs. The main reasons for their support included a belief that EHRs would accelerate and improve the accuracy of diagnoses as well as reduce prescription errors (Canada Health Infoway 2007). “EHRs benefit patients by improving health care and decreasing risks; lowering the chance of having duplicate, invasive or expensive tests; and shortening wait times” (Canada Health Infoway n.d.). By 2016, Infoway aims to satisfy the public’s desire and have EHRs available for all Canadians, regardless of their age or location (Canada Health Infoway 2009). As any person who has tuned into the news over the last little while knows, transforming EHRs into a reality for everyone in Canada is a tall order, one that sometimes trips over financial, technical and organizational hurdles. Those challenges go a long way to explaining why the healthcare community and the media alike were so intrigued by the 10th anniversary – celebrated in 2009 – of Canada’s first provincewide integrated electronic patient record system: Ontario’s electronic Child Health Network (eCHN) (www.echn.ca). eCHN’s secure, private network enables authorized healthcare professionals to access – through a desktop or portable computer terminal – their patients’ medical data drawn from many different sources. If, for example, a child arrives in an emergency room in Ottawa, the attending pediatrician can quickly discover whether her patient has any medical issues that might impinge on his care. If a general practitioner locum who works in Timmins one day a month wants to review a patient’s complete medical history, including radiographs and laboratory tests taken in Sudbury a year earlier, he can do so from the convenience of his handheld computer. Meanwhile, it takes just a few minutes for a nurse at Toronto’s Bloorview Kids Rehab to review the charts of a “new consult” outpatient who has been referred to her Brain Injury Rehab program by a physician in Thunder Bay. “ The overarching goal of eCHN is to provide an information database that functions as a decision-support to the circle of care for each individual patient.”