Connectathon: Advancing Health IT Interoperability
Columnist André Picard, writing in a February 2025 edition of the Globe and Mail, highlighted a critical issue: “Our health information systems are pitiful, marked by a lack of access and interoperability.” This lack of connectivity among Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) and Electronic Health Records (EHRs) has long been a source of frustration for Canadian physicians, who spend excessive hours searching through multiple systems for necessary patient information. This has contributed to physician burnout.
Fortunately, significant strides are being made to connect these disparate systems, allowing healthcare providers to quickly access patient histories, test results, allergies, and medication records. A key event driving these improvements is the annual, international Connectathon. This year, healthcare IT experts gathered in Toronto for the international Connectathon, where teams from around the world collaborated to solve the persistent challenge of healthcare IT connectivity.
The Connectathon, organized by IHE (Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise), a global organization, has been held annually for 25 years; however, it was hosted in Canada for the first time. This is a strong indicator of the heightened importance Canadians are placing on improving the interoperability of health IT systems. Over 150 interoperability specialists convened in Toronto to address these challenges.
Attila Farkas, an AI strategy specialist with Canada Health Infoway, noted that an interoperability roadmap, announced two years prior, provides guidance for achieving connectivity. The roadmap outlines necessary steps but does not mandate participation; this is left to the vendors to use standards from the Canadian roadmap, as well as international organizations.
Michael Nussbaum, a well-known Canadian healthcare IT consultant and IHE International board member, explained that the Connectathon and similar forums give vendors the opportunity to test their solutions. “We’ve got 26 different vendors represented here on the floor, testing 30 different systems,” he said. Vendors are vetted by IHE and Infoway representatives to ensure functionality, and systems that pass the tests receive “seals of approval” for various forms of interoperability, assuring their customers that systems work as advertised.
Participants at the Canada Connectathon included major players like MEDITECH and Epic, as well as vendors of medical equipment and consumer devices. The event is increasingly inclusive of all parties in the health ecosystem, as these systems are used by clinicians; Oracle/Cerner, another dominant hospital information system, regularly participates in previous Connectathons.
International Patient Summary (IPS) in Focus
A major focus of the Toronto gathering was the International Patient Summary (IPS), a concise overview of key patient data, including medications, allergies, problems, immunizations, and test results. The objective is to develop a method to extract this information from various databases and package it in a readily accessible and transferable format.
Nussbaum highlighted the importance of the IPS, citing its recent use during the annual Hajj pilgrimage in Mecca, where over two million Muslims participated. These pilgrims, often elderly and traveling in extreme heat, benefit from readily available medical information in case of emergencies. In 2024, the IPS was employed to capture and share patient records using QR codes, enabling medical authorities in Saudi Arabia to quickly and easily access the necessary medical data.
“We’re learning a lot from our international partners,” Nussbaum said, adding that innovation like this has the potential to reduce burnout for Canadian physicians, too.
Pan-Canadian Patient Summary
Canada is developing a Canadian version of the IPS, the Pan-Canadian Patient Summary (PS-CA). Vendors tested this summary during the Toronto event. Farkas noted that several jurisdictions are already implementing the PS-CA, with New Brunswick leading the way. In New Brunswick, the Ministry of Health, in collaboration with Canadian company VeroSource, has created and deployed the PS-CA. This portable system allows patients to carry a QR code with them as they move between care providers within the province, and the long-term goal is to expand its use across other provinces and internationally.
Addressing Real-World Challenges
Creating interoperable systems is not easy, as various sessions at the Connectathon demonstrated. Farkas stressed the importance of ensuring that the data contained in the IPS is correct and secure. “These are real-world problems,” he said. “You must make sure the solutions are secure and trustworthy. We’re brainstorming to come up with solutions.”
E-Referral and E-Consult Systems
Another key area of discussion was e-referral and e-consult systems. The current processes for specialist referrals and consultations are often bogged down by telephone calls and faxes – the goal is to create closed-loop, electronic systems that facilitate quick communication between general practitioners and specialists while keeping patients informed. A significant challenge is that doctors use various systems in clinics and hospitals, and these e-referral and e-consult solutions must be able to communicate seamlessly with each other.
Other Initiatives
Other initiatives across Canada are addressing the healthcare IT connectivity gap. In Ontario, Project AMPLIFI is connecting the IT systems of nursing homes and hospital EHRs to seamlessly share data, particularly during the transfer of patients. The pilot project, which connected the PointClickCare system with St. Joseph’s Villa and St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton, has expanded across the province. Major hospital vendors, including Epic, Oracle, and MEDITECH, have also launched their own interoperability initiatives in Canada.
Farkas emphasized the value of the international aspect of the Connectathon, highlighting that Canada can learn from other countries’ experiences. Farkas noted that European countries are at the forefront of the IPS implementation, and representatives from Austria, along with other European nations, were in attendance at the Toronto event.
Blanda Helena de Mello, a representative from Brazil, presented on how that country’s efforts, using the FHIR standard, have improved health IT connectivity, particularly over the past five years. Despite variations in medical vocabularies across different Brazilian states and municipalities, software has been deployed to facilitate translation and enable a common language across systems.
Daniel Doane, a consultant with the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), discussed the “Pan-American Highway for Health” project, an initiative to create interoperable health IT in countries connected by the highway from Alaska to Argentina. Launched in October with 12 countries, the project aims to expand to 35 and to deploy common standards to more easily share health data. The IPS is very important for its future plans.
Doane noted that PAHO’s efforts will be modeled on the European health experience where possible, and that a project team named the project’s theme song after AC/DC’s song “Highway to Hell,” as the “Highway to Health.”
