While several provinces have built centralized drug information systems that theoretically allow e-mail, “in the whole of Canada there are still only a few doctors transmitting prescriptions,” Cooper says, while lamenting that Infoway has concentrated on building province-wide and national integrated databases rather than simpler, cheaper local systems that simply connect pharmacists and physicians.

Even in Alberta, an eHealthcare leader, pharmacists still rely on handwritten prescriptions and faxes from physicians that must be manually entered into the system, notes Dr. Brendan Bunting, chair of a new clinician working group that Infoway established last spring to expedite e-mail. “Many Health projects have been dogged by different design concepts, language and architecture,” Bunting acknowledged in an email crafted by Infoway. More here.