Canada had a blueprint for an amazing health data system. We never built it.
Posted Apr 14, 2021 05:19:51 AM.
In today’s Big Story podcast, in the late 1990s, it became clear that Canada’s health data systems would need to go digital. A thorough report was presented, the first of many to come, laying out what needed to happen for Canada to lead the world in digital health data. A national data system would track everything from outbreaks and symptoms to vaccinations and side effects. But…we never built it. Over the next 20-plus years, little was done—and nothing at all from a truly national level.
Now, when we desperately need to be able to have access to real-time data on what’s happening where, every province relies on a different system, and many of them are duct-taped together from the bones of what was supposed to be a world-leading piece of infrastructure. What happened?
GUEST: Justin Ling (Read Justin’s reporting here.)
You can subscribe to The Big Story podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google and Spotify
You can also find it at thebigstorypodcast.ca.