Canada lagging in health technology innovation: experts

The next generation of health technology is slowly rolling out in Canada, but experts say more government leadership is needed to bring innovations such as remote health monitoring and personalized universal health records into widespread adoption. According to a recent report from Reuters, at least 10 of the 23 top-ranked hospitals in the United States are involved in a pilot program of Apple Inc.’s HealthKit service, using the platform to store patient information such as blood pressure, weight and heart rate. The data can help hospitals prioritize care, reduce visits and anticipate health problems in both healthy patients and those with chronic conditions, the report said. An International Data Corp. report released late last year said 70 per cent of worldwide health-care organizations will invest in consumer-facing connected health technology such as apps, wearables and remote monitoring by 2018. By 2020, according to the same report, 80 per cent of health-care data will pass through the cloud as providers use it for analytics and decision-making. Telus Corp. chief operating officer Josh Blair, who heads the company’s health-care division, said in a phone interview the Canadian market has the “appetite” for these types of innovation but remains “a few years behind” when it comes to adopting connected health technology. “That represents opportunity in the sense that there's a lot we can do in the years ahead that will deliver better health outcomes and also take cost out of the health care system,” he said. Right now, Blair said, there are multiple regulatory processes across the country that Telus has to follow, with different provinces and territories leading in different areas of health technology. “I think there is an opportunity in Canada for more discussion at the national level amongst the various jurisdictions on regulations and innovation that could be moved forward collectively,” he said. “There's lots of absolutely wonderful aspects about the Canadian health care system, so we need to work within that framework to bring innovation to market, even if it's one province at a time.” British Columbia and Ontario are both home to Telus pilot projects for home health monitoring, he said, in which patients can provide health data to their providers and avoid daily in-person checkups. Alberta is leading on having personal health records accessible by individuals, Blair said, while Newfoundland and Labrador is working on streamlined individual health records. “There's different provinces leading in different ways, so our task is to help each of those provinces and help them to be successful so that other provinces and territories will follow suit,” he said. “That's an opportunity and a responsibility for Telus to help realize best practices, province by province, and to help cascade those provinces and those innovations to multiple other jurisdictions.” Telus has differentiated itself among Canada's major telecom service providers for its public forays into the area of health technology. Telus took in $550 million in revenue from health-related businesses in 2013 and made more than $1.5 billion in investments in this area over the last decade, according a factsheet provided by the company. An overview from Telus of its health division says Canada’s lags other economically advanced countries, including Norway, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, when it comes to access to health-care professionals, delays in appointments and adoption rates for electronic health records. The Telus document quotes a 2011 Conference Board of Canada study that found that if Canadians had been able to use the Internet to consult with doctors, view test results and renew prescriptions, almost 47 million in-person medical appointments a year could be avoided. It notes that the same report predicted provincial health-care spending would reach $250 billion a year by 2020 and already accounts for more than half of all spending in most provinces. “Health-care spending in Canada is increasing at a rate that probably becomes untenable at a certain point in time,” Blair said. “We believe the only solution to containing the rise in health-care costs is through technology innovation and delivering better health outcomes for less money spent.” Dr. Ed Brown, a physician and CEO of the Ontario Telemedicine Network (OTN), said the Canadian public system, for better and for worse, doesn’t put individuals at the centre of health care the same way the American system does. “You have to wonder why Canada has not had the level of consumer telemedicine of the U.S.,” he said in a phone interview. “We've had more of a health-care-system-driven type of telemedicine solution, and the U.S. really is starting at the consumer-driven side.” OTN is a non-profit group that works to implement telecommunications solutions for medical health, including remote diagnostics, monitoring and other kinds of virtual care. Last year the group’s telemedicine program enabled more than 390,000 consultations for patients with general practitioners and specialists. The company launched a tele-home care program in 2013 in partnership with Telus Corp. in which patients with chronic disease use a tablet to share data on a daily basis with health-care providers and learn how to manage more of their condition on their own. Brown said the patients in the tele-home care program see their visits to the hospital fall by about half. “It's dramatic and it really also points to some of the other exciting things we're going to be able to introduce into health care into the future,” he said. “That's why this is such an exciting field, because like any other industry people automate and use technology to improve efficiency. And that's exactly what we're doing here through the health-care system.” Jimmy Yang, managing director of Toronto-based consulting firm Garrison Health Advisory Services Inc., said the difference between Canada and the U.S. is that the American private health-care system has stronger motivations to find even small efficiencies. “In the U.S., their structures are different and there are different incentives to move people into the hospital and get them out quickly,” he said in a phone interview. “And so the systems are different in the U.S. and they're a little more catered to companies that are able to do things a little bit better or present some opportunities in improved efficiency." That leads to more of an “appetite to experiment,” he said, although he adds that Canada doesn’t lack for new ideas in health care and the government approvals process is “fairly well laid out” by the different jurisdictions. “There's a lot of support on the research and grant side,” he said. What is needed in Canada, Yang said, is more help for startups and those innovating in medical technology when it comes to selling their products. “There's a lot of work to be done on helping startups understand how they're going to sell and scale to multi-hospital consortium sales or the consumer, whatever the product is,” he said. “There's a relative vacuum in Canada in terms of those types of experts in the field that can help these people at that point in time learn how to scale their business and sell to other providers in abundance.” It’s at that stage where Canadian companies typically look to move to the United States or fail, Yang said. Aside from funding from public and private sources dedicated to helping companies sell their product, Yang said, there should be cross-border partnerships between Canada and other countries, including the U.S. and China, among organizations that are looking for new medical technology and efficiencies. “Let's let international organizations and health-care providers benefit from our world-class facilities — the world-class clinical validation that's already taking place — and try our products out,” he said. — With reporting by Peter Henderson at phenderson@thewirereport.ca and editing by Derek Abma at dabma@thewirereport.ca

Canada lagging in health technology innovation: experts

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