Guy Bisson M.D., M.Sc., FRCP ( c ), ABNM
Full Professor and Director Academic Computing Faculty of Medicine University of Sherbrooke

The future of telehealth in Canada : the killer app ?

I strongly believe that Telehealth is one of the enabler that will empower the patients in their quest for a better health and help them take a more active and pro-active part in their own health care choices and decisions.

Since our health care system is a very knowledge-based ecosystem, as a valid member of the healthcare team, patients will have access to information that is up to date, valid and clinically relevant to them. This information will not be just about disease but also about promoting health and how to stay that way.

As an active participant in the health care organization, they will be able to communicate with the other members of the team, participate in discussion/support groups and they will also receive new information or reminders in a pro-active manner from the organization.

In this new paradigm, user friendly technologies will enable them to easily monitor either their well-being or the status of their clinical condition and send the data to intelligent databases that will interact with nurses or doctors if necessary to maintain or stabilize their condition. Some are even talking about body networking !

The killer app that will integrate all those enabling technologies and help create this new virtual health care ecosystem is an emerging technology called an eHealth Portal. eHealth Portal will personalize bidirectional information and knowledge flow in a new patient and well-being centric healthcare system !