Debate at Cancer Care Ontario's CIO Forum

February 10, 2012 - Yesterday I participated in a debate about the use of technology to drive down the cost of health care as part of Cancer Care Ontario’s Chief Information Officer Day. My partner was Irfan Dhalla, an internal medicine doctor from St. Michael’s Hospital. We were debating against Ed Brown, the CEO of the Ontario Telemedicine Network and Jeremy Theal, Director of Medical Informatics at North York General Hospital. Rudyard Griffiths was the very articulate and well practiced moderator. The topic: “Be it resolved that innovative technology is the best way to bend the cost curve down to sustain Ontario’s healthcare.” We were the opposition.

Ed argued that technology just needs the appropriate application in order to succeed and that it is on the cusp of doing so. 

I presented my usual argument that technology was originally developed in aid of an acute care system that does not meet the needs of our current population who are largely suffering from chronic illness. No matter how much technology is developed, it will never be able to cope with this change unless the focus is changed from acute to chronic care.

Jeremy argued that there are numerous areas where technological innovation has reduced acute care use and saved money.

Irfan pointed out that cost reduction due to technology is really a result of there being less expenditure on personnel and procedures, and reducing these costs is not a technological issue at all, but a management one.

Our point was well taken and the final vote in a room of Chief Information Officers was decisively in our favour. Even CIOs know that the system they are building must begin to respond to the people who are being served by it. Patients must participate in setting up the systems which should include a lot more communication capacity, educational material, and peer-to-peer networks as well as databases.