Sunday House Call # 286 (Oct 18, 2009)

580 CFRA Ottawa at 3 PM

3:15

The Ontario Government’s electronic medical record fiasco spent a billion dollars with little to show for it. At McMaster University, physicians and programmers have developed a comprehensive, secure, web-based and open source electronic health records system that is ready to be rolled out across Canada.

There are several major differences in the way the system was developed. While the government used a top down approach with consultants who do not actually treat patients, the team at McMaster used a ground-up approach based on clinical need and patient-encounter experience.

The McMaster EMR, Oscar, is an open-source program that is continually upgraded through direct clinical use. Physicians, who have programming experience or programmers hired by the clinical staff, develop modifications that are submitted to McMaster for quality control and added to the program.

What does this mean for the patient? What can it do for them to assist them in being proactive in their health care management?

Oh yes, one more thing. The McMaster EMR is FREE!

• Dr. David H Chan, MD, CCFP, MSc, FCFP, Associate Professor in the Department of Family Medicine at McMaster University and a family physician at the Stonechurch Family Health Centre and the developer of OSCAR

3:30

There are many branches of stroke research from prevention, emergency treatment, to rehabilitation technologies and therapies. When a person suffers a stroke, it is a race to try to minimize the death of brain cells that follow the initial damage and oxygen deprivation.

Scientists at the Krembil Neuroscience Centre, located at Toronto Western Hospital part of University Health Network, have learned in laboratory-based experiments, how to prevent the death of brain cells which would normally die within a few days after the brain is deprived of oxygen (stroke).

The findings were published in the September 8, 2009 online edition in the journal Nature Neuroscience.

• Dr. Mike Tymianski, MD PhD FRCSC, Medical Director of the Neurovascular Therapeutics Program at the University Health Network. Professor in the Departments of Surgery and Physiology at University of Toronto and Senior Scientist at Toronto Western Hospital Research Institute