Leslee Thompson and Murray Martin explore the process of integrating cancer care throughout the healthcare system in Ontario. A complex assignment that gave rise to this Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-term Care comment: … "never before have 11 separate healthcare organizations come together voluntarily to agree on a common vision for cancer care and implement changes that involve transfer of money and staff, service improvement of individual programs in context of an overall provincial plan for cancer." A full review of Cancer Care Ontario can be found at HQ online at: www.longwoods.com/opinions/index.html.

From system change we move to a specific disease management strategy to help manage asthma. This is by Heather Sharpe et al. Sharpe comes from the University of Alberta but represents a partnership of providers, investigators, universities and pharmaceutical companies. The involvement of multiple stakeholders in research is an effective knowledge transfer strategy - a point not to be overlooked when reading this paper.

In Longwoods Review, I participated in a study of Canadian-trained nurses practicing in North Carolina. The loss of these RNs to the U.S. is a significant problem and there is an urgent need to obtain a better understanding of why they leave the country. Administrators should take this opportunity to respond with their own innovations designed to attract nurses to employment opportunities closer to home. Send your comments to Dianne Foster Kent at dkent@longwoods.com so that we can share them with your colleagues.

In the journal of Electronic Healthcare, Denis Protti provides lessons to be learned from England to improve patient safety. This is a theme that Longwoods will dwell on throughout the year; two issues of HealthcarePapers will be dedicated to patient safety policy and practice options and other developments will be covered in our other journals and online. Always popular is our KLAS Report; this time analyzing technologies offering computerized physician order entry (CPOE) capability.

Commentary from CIHR, CIHI, ICES and individual experts; profiles of Steven Lewis from Saskatoon, Donna Strating from Edmonton and Jonathan Lomas from Ottawa; a review of Michael Rachlis' latest book; and commentary on significant policy shifts in Ontario provide the readers with a wide range of information to choose from - all of it significant.

We continue to respond to our daily challenge: the editorial opportunity to meet the growing needs of our online readers. Longwoods.com enjoys more than 40,000 readers a month producing some 1,000,000 hits of traffic. Much of the "e" content is web-only material that is complementary to the pages of our journals. For example, our databases covering HR Resources, and Law and Governance cases are valuable nourishment for the hungry learner, as is the ongoing coverage of developments of the electronic healthcare record. These and other services can be found on our web site together with "e" versions of many of the articles and papers published in print. You can visit us at Longwoods.com; healthcarequarterly.com or electronichealthcare.net.

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