Canadian province warns of high cost of "interoperable" PACS:
This article was originally published in Clinica
Executive Summary
The cost of making differing e-health systems interoperable is one of the problems being faced by Canada. "It's not going to be cheap," Roger Girard, Ontario's chief e-health strategist told Canadian Health Technology in reference to Ontario's efforts. He added that the province Ontario, which performs around 16.6 million diagnostic imaging exams annually, currently lacks the required funds to build an interoperable PACS network but that recommendations will be made to the government at a later date. Organisations and initiatives, such as Canada Health Infoway and Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE), which help systems to overcome systemic problems, are used to ensure that best standards are obtained for systems throughout the world. Interoperability is thought to improve healthcare services productivity by 25-35%.