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Current Initiatives
As a collaborative of the western provinces and territories, WHIC explores common opportunities that meet western provinces and territories health information needs and support the strategic directions and initiatives for health infostructure at the national level. Currently, WHIC is focused on:
Provider Registry
PRS is a centralized, standards-based jurisdictional
repository of core information about health service providers, e.g., physicians,
nurses, pharmacists. Information is supplied by authorized sources, such as,
professional colleges. PRS ensures the security of patient health information by
employing or enabling proven security and privacy techniques. Data in the
repository is available to authorized organizations to facilitate the
transmission of provider information between authorized organizations in real
time, which make PRS a cornerstone in the development of the Electronic Health
Record (EHR).
PRS has been successfully implemented in BC, Alberta,
Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Newfoundland and Labrador, demonstrating the
benefits of collaboration across provincial jurisdictions to address common
needs.
Telehealth
The Telehealth Working Group shares information, identifies collaborative opportunities, and discusses common issues to enable improvements in telehealth and to offer input into national telehealth directions (within current national structures). Convergence of Telehealth and eHealth is a topic of continuing interest.
Chronic Disease Management
The WHIC jurisdictions share coThe WHIC jurisdictions share common interests in primary care and chronic disease management. Primary care is the first point of contact of individuals with the health system. At this level, health services are mobilized and coordinated to promote health, to prevent illness, to care for common illness, and to manage ongoing problems. Primary care includes a vast array of services involving a variety of health professionals. Provinces and territories are all increasing their focus on strategies to address the challenges and changes in primary care.
WHIC has created CDM data and messaging standards, and the CDM Toolkit, in support of chronic disease management, especially in primary care settings. The CDM data standards were developed to support consistency in the information that is captured in a CDM record. Development initially focussed on three conditions – diabetes, hypertension and chronic kidney disease – and was performed in close collaboration with a clinical advisory group. CDM messaging standards were based on HL7 v3 and message types were limited to focus on the exchange of CDM records. Significant effort was investing in development of a robust message structure that would minimize the need for future changes in message content.
To view general CDM project documents, click here.
To view CDM Data and HL7 Messaging Standards documents, click here.
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