You have to give the Alberta government credit for having guts.
In the face of the federal government’s shilly-shallying about getting everybody on the Internet, the province is bravely pushing ahead with its SuperNet project.
And despite criticism that it has become a bottomless money pit, Alberta Wellnet (or We//net, as it is being branded) is actually getting some good press.
Take the Canadian Information Productivity Awards, a national competition usually dominated by Ontario winners. The Wellnet project won one of three Awards of Excellence in the Government section in November, 2001.
It was also a finalist in the “large-not-for-profit” category of the Alberta E-Business Awards. So it’s capturing a lot of nice attention.
But what is it really doing for Albertans? And what COULD it be doing? The Wellnet folks decided to focus on some bite-size projects that had a good chance of succeeding.
They’ve made a decent start in automating prescriptions with the Seniors Drug Profile (SDP) program. If implemented province-wide, it would certainly help you if you are over 65 years old and happen to stumble into a suitably equipped emergency room unable to say what’s wrong with you. The doctors or nurses could pull up your medication history online.
By Sept. 30, 2001, the latest reporting period, the SDP program was operational in 383 sites in 97 facilities in Alberta, which is ahead of target.
The Wellnet website shows the “next steps” as moving it out into physician offices and community pharmacies.
Of course, there are some huge stumbling blocks waiting for them. A lot of physicians don’t have the IT equipment, knowledge or interest to mess with a new computerized system just because the government thinks it’s a good idea.
If you’re a doctor who’s headed for retirement yourself in a couple of years, why would you bother putting in a whole new gizmo just to please the government and the Blue Cross folks?
You already have charts for all your patients and they’re probably written in your unintelligible longhand scrawl. But at least you can read them, and maybe that’s all you care about.
Likewise, several pharmacies have their own perfectly good, and in some cases national, web-based prescription drug systems. Shoppers Drug Mart allows you to order refills (authorized by your physician) online and even specify at which location you want to collect them. (Their site isn’t perfect. When I tested it I was invited to debug their Javascript code’s Runtime Error 46.)
The Wellnet gurus acknowledge that their Seniors Drug Program is only a transitional phase, really a pilot project. The grander vision is to have all of us on a unified Pharmaceutical Information Network (PIN.)
A test of this system, in Westlock and Leduc, is scheduled to start about now and run through the summer. If successful, and if rolled out across the province, this could really improve health-care service and reduce costs.
Unfilled prescriptions are just one example. Right now, your doctor probably has no idea if you are even taking your prescriptions to the pharmacist. You might be just putting them up on the fridge.
Of course, if it’s a happy-making drug like Viagra or Prozac, you’ll probably run it right down to the drugstore. But those boring pills such as high blood pressure medications do tend to get neglected, especially if you have to pay part of the cost. A few years later, when you’re a guest of the stroke unit at the Foothills Hospital, you’ll be wishing you took your Lasix, Lopressor or Captopril.
So will the government, since it could have saved a huge amount of money if you just took your medicine. The PIN system will allow your doctor to track what prescriptions you actually get filled.
Nobody is going to stand in your bathroom and push the pills into you, but a conscientious physician just might have a word with you on your next visit.
Oh yes, it’s important to note that they are taking serious precautions to protect your privacy on this system.
What could Wellnet be if there was enough money (which seems to be a problem right now) and we all really believed in it?
It could fulfill the lofty promises of the ironically named “Health Maintenance Organizations” in the U.S. A single card could not only track your prescriptions and treatments, it could also open the door to good medical information and disease-prevention opportunities.
It could show you options such as acupuncture and herbal therapies.
Sure, there’s tons of health-related information on the Internet, but is it all credible? Of course not. And how do you know what’s real and what’s hype?
There’s a site that’s run by Dr. C. Everett Koop, the former U.S. Surgeon General turned Internet entrepreneur, whose slogan is “the best prescription is knowledge.” It’s probably OK, as is the well-regarded U.S. National Library of Medicine site. You don’t even need an MD degree to read these. This positive, consumer-oriented spin on health information has been sorely lacking from the Wellnet project so far.
With financial pressures on the Alberta government, and the money-hungry health-care infrastructure, Wellnet is probably going to have to fight for every dollar it gets.
It has good ideas and national visibility. But to be a success, Alberta Wellnet needs to start making a difference to every Albertan, sooner rather than later.
