New policy statement on improving digital health solutions in BC

Digital health plays a vital role in how doctors deliver health care and support patient health today and into the future. However, the evolution of digital health solutions – such as EMRs, virtual care, patient portals, and electronic health records – hasn’t been without its challenges, preventing these solutions from being utilized to their full potential. As the Ministry of Health moves its province-wide Digital Health Strategy forward, advocating for physician influence in shaping digital health planning and digital health solutions is a priority for Doctors of BC.

In our new policy statement, Improving Digital Health Solutions in BC, we support the improvement of digital health solutions in a way that ensures they are beneficial to physicians, user groups, patients, and the health system. We are committed to engaging with members to ensure the physician voice is reflected throughout the process, to make certain any proposed digital health solutions align with your needs in a way that doesn’t create more work or add to already existing burdens, and to support you in adopting and leveraging digital health solutions to improve your clinical workflow.

In the policy statement, Doctors of BC makes a number of recommendations and commitments to ensure effective implementation and use of digital health solutions:

Our recommendations:

• Support information continuity and clinical workflows through interoperability and integration with existing solutions.
• Empower patients, support population health, and improve experiences of care for all users.
• Involve meaningful user engagement, including physician engagement, throughout each solutions’ life cycle.
• Be supported by appropriate legislation, coordinated governance, and established standards that include protections for privacy and data security.
• Support continuous quality improvement and be subject to ongoing monitoring and evaluation.
• Be cost-effective for the system and demonstrate value and utility for physicians and user groups.

Our commitments:

• Engage with, and effectively advocate for, members on challenges and opportunities they face with digital health solutions.
• Support meaningful engagement and leadership of physicians in the life cycle of digital health solutions.
• Support physicians in adopting and leveraging digital health solutions to improve clinical workflow.
• Work with the Ministry of Health and health system partners to improve digital health governance in BC through inclusion of physician participation and leadership.

Effective digital health solutions, while fundamental to how patient care is delivered and how our health system functions, must be ever evolving as technology advances and needs change. Doctors of BC is committed to helping transform health care delivery through digital health solutions, while improving the provision of and access to quality patient care in BC. The principles in this statement represent opportunities for collaboration to better leverage the potential of digital health solutions to benefit patients, physicians, health care providers, and the health system as a whole.