The development of a primary healthcare information system to support performance measurement and research in british columbia.

I n 2003, the British Columbia Ministry of Health services contracted with the Centre for Health services and Policy Research at the university of British Columbia to conduct three years of work to establish a population-based information system to describe the primary healthcare (PHC) sector from temporal, geographic, population and provider perspectives. In this special issue of Healthcare Policy/Politiques de Santé, we share lessons from that experience for those interested in conducting similar work, and point readers to other reports that have emerged from these undertakings. This information will be of interest to healthcare policy makers and managers, as we describe key challenges and opportunities in developing information systems designed to support performance management and research in this sector. The topic is timely, given the importance that Canadians attribute to PHC and the magnitude of public investments over the past decade to improve PHC performance.