ConnectingOntario Release Ten

Date of PIA Report: July 25, 2018 (PIA reflective of information received up until this date) 

Date PIA Summary Last Reviewed and Updated:

The following is a summary of the above-referenced PIA, including a brief background, key findings, and risks and recommendations as applicable. See our Contact page to find information on how to contact the Ontario Health Privacy Office should you have any questions.

Background

ConnectingOntario improves the patient and health care provider experience by providing point-of-care access to digital patient data from across the care continuum. This allows timely initiation of treatment and increased coordination among individual health care providers. This health information includes data from regional and provincial data services such as the Ontario Laboratory Information System (OLIS) and the Digital Health Drug Repository (DHDR). ConnectingOntario Release Ten will make Diagnostic Imaging Common Services (DI CS) data accessible through the solution as well.

This Delta PIA (dPIA) provides an analysis of ConnectingOntario Release Ten that most significantly includes the introduction of a new diagnostic imaging portlet that will source both images and reports using the DI CS. The release also includes viewer enhancements that improve the way information is displayed further to feedback from the ConnectingOntario Clinical Working Group and changes to update how object identifiers are managed.

Currently, ConnectingOntario health care providers can access Digital Imaging (DI) health records (reports only) contributed by the ConnectingOntario data contributors within the ConnectingOntario Clinical Data Repository (CDR). DI CS integration will provide ConnectingOntario health care providers access to the provincial DI health records (reports and images) from Ontario’s three regional diagnostic imaging repositories and independent health facilities:

• The Northern and Eastern Ontario Diagnostic Imaging Network (NEODIN)
• Southwestern Ontario Diagnostic Imaging Network (SWODIN)
• Hospital Diagnostic Imaging Repository Services (HDIRS)
• Independent Health Facilities (IHF)

As a result, ConnectingOntario users will have a more fulsome diagnostic imaging result set.

Key Findings

The dPIA concludes that eHealth Ontario operates both DI CS and the ConnectingOntario solution as part of the Electronic Health Record (EHR) pursuant to section 6.2 of O.Reg.329/04 to make data available to health care providers for the purpose of providing or assisting in the provision of care.

The dPIA makes two recommendations to ensure that the data received and utilized by eHealth Ontario, complies with PHIPA, as well as, eHealth Ontario policies, procedures and privacy best practices.

Risks and Recommendations

The dPIA makes the following recommendations:

Recommendation 1: It is recommended that eHealth Ontario’s Product Management team ensure that consent directive override functionality is introduced at the next available release.

Recommendation 2: It is recommended that a plan be developed to decommission the diagnostic imaging contribution feed to the CDR and that the terminology and mapping assessment performed by Architecture and Standards is periodically reviewed to ensure that modifications to ConnectingOntario queries continue to ensure duplicate data is not rendered in the viewer.

eHealth Ontario is currently in the process of taking steps to have each of these recommendations implemented.