About Electronic Medical Records – Not What You Think!

The impetus for the upcoming project on electronic medical records, to be carried out by Professor Pina D’Agostino, in assocation with the Law Commission of Ontario, was not all the notoriety around consulting contracts at eHealth Ontario, but all the talk in the news and Ontario legislature about the agency has motivated me to talk about the medical e-records project.
Professor D’Agostino will be one of our Osgoode Hall Law School Scholars in Residence from July to December 2009. The medical e-records project is about the intersection of privacy, ethical and IP concerns and Pina will be using a case study, the Motherisk Program at Sick Kids, in the process of moving from paper to electronic records, to work through these issues and develop a governance model to ensure that they receive their appropriate due. She has worked in this area in the United Kingdom and brings her expertise in intellectual property to developing a coherence in this aspect of medical e-records.

I’ll provide more about the progress of this project once Pina begins in July, including news about a symposium we’ll likely organize to bring together constituencies interested in the most effective system for clarifying ownership rights and protecting privacy and consent issues related to electronic health records.