The federal Liberals are moving to streamline and secure health data across jurisdictions with a new bill that imposes new rules on technology vendors. Health Minister Mark Holland tabled the legislation in the House of Commons on Thursday morning. The bill would require vendors to ensure that health information tech they license, sell or supply as a service is interoperable.
That means patients and health-care providers would be able to completely and securely access the data and exchange it with other systems — for example, those being used in another hospital or jurisdiction. The bill is designed fill gaps in provinces and territories where similar provisions don’t already exist. It would also prohibit data blocking, or any practice that would prevent, discourage or interfere with a user’s access to their own health data or their ability to transfer it to another system.
Story continues below advertisement Last year, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau offered provinces and territories a new 10-year health accord in response to pleas from jurisdictions that said they were facing an urgent shortage of health workers and massive backlogs to deliver care. 0:59 New funding ‘flowing’ to Albertans to support data delivery on improved health-care outcomes, health minister says In exchange for an estimated $17.3 billion in new health funding from the federal government through the Canada Health Transfer, Trudeau asked provinces to share comparable data and digitize the health .
