Patient Summary
The Patient Summary: A Foundational Component of Connected Care
A patient summary provides a snapshot of essential healthcare information about a patient. It includes a minimal, standardized set of clinically relevant data that is specialty-agnostic and condition-independent. This information is readily usable by both patients and authorized healthcare providers to support informed healthcare decisions.
Benefits of Patient Sumary
The Patient Summary enables care providers to access up-to-date patient information across different settings. This can be critical for making timely decisions during transitions of care, unscheduled medical situations, or coordination of care. Benefits include:
For Clinicians
- Share information more efficiently, reducing delays and minimizing repetitive tasks (e.g., patients repeating their health history).
- Improve the quality of care and patient outcomes with access to timely clinical information.
- Enhance patient-provider interactions by reducing time spent gathering information and focusing on care.
- Reduce patient safety events, such as adverse drug reactions.
- Avoid unnecessary duplicate diagnostic and laboratory tests.
For Patients
- Empower patients to access, manage, and share their health information with providers, family, and caregivers.
- Improve patient autonomy and understanding of their health, fostering better adherence to care plans and medications.
- Enhance quality of interactions with care providers, leading to a more positive health care experience.
For Jurisdictions
- Accommodate intra-jurisdictional requirements while ensuring essential clinical information is captured to support better health outcomes.
- Reduce the effort required for future enhancements to patient summary solutions and improve scalability.
For Healthcare Funders
- Reduce implementation costs and timelines through reusable data content and technical profiles.
- Enable more reliable automated reporting for health system evaluation, helping to target health care spending where it is needed most.
For Vendors
- Support pan-Canadian coordination, simplifying implementation timelines and reducing resource requirements.
- Align with global standards, eliminating the need for international vendors to create specialized solutions for Canada.
PS-CA Overview
The pan-Canadian Patient Summary Specification (PS-CA) provides a framework for creating, consuming and sharing patient summaries. The PS-CA is based on the International Patient Summary, with adaptations for the Canadian context.
Why was the PS-CA developed?
At Infoway, we focus on improving patient care by uniting Canada's healthcare stakeholders for a future where digital health ensures accessible and connected care with the patient at its heart. In June 2021, Canada made a commitment at the G7 meeting to collaboratively work on aligning Patient Summary implementations with the International Patient Summary (IPS). Collaboration with Health Canada, provinces and territories, industry partners, and the clinical community ensures that the PS-CA evolves to meet the needs in Canada.
In March 2023, we announced the Interoperability Roadmap, a strategic framework designed to enhance data sharing across the Canadian healthcare system. The roadmap is a testament to our commitment to creating a more connected and efficient healthcare environment, ultimately leading to better patient outcomes and streamlined care processes, with one of its key initiatives being the implementation of the International Patient Summary.
The adoption of common standards ensures that patient summaries can be seamlessly shared across healthcare providers, regardless of the clinical information system being used (e.g., EMR/EHR solution).
Access the PS-CA Specification