Improving safety and services for Canadian patients
With the advent of the COVID pandemic, a new moment of change has been thrust upon us, as doctors’ offices, clinics, and hospitals impose strict social distancing policies.
Introduction
Healthcare has long held a central place in Canadian society, and with a steadily aging population and constantly advancing technology, it’s no surprise that demands on the healthcare system have been increasing over time — as have its costs and bottlenecks. With the advent of the COVID pandemic, a new moment of change has been thrust upon us, as doctors’ offices, clinics, and hospitals impose strict social distancing policies or sometimes close altogether.
Remote medical care promises to alleviate some of these pressures but brings its own challenges in terms of accurately identifying patients (and the validity of their health cards), retrieving the correct records irrespective of location, and prescribing and delivering medicines to the right patients (rather than to those who might seek to impersonate them). Canadians who are prescribed medications, for example, have them filled between five to eight times per year.1
In this white paper, we’ll look at how a healthcare system supported by a robust digital ID infrastructure would work, and how this technology might improve the delivery of health services — both in-person and remotely-delivered, and when picking up medicine or having it shipped from a pharmacy.
