Highlights of the report include:

• The total cost of illness in Canada for 1993 was an estimated $157 billion which is roughly equivalent to $5,450 per capita or 22 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

• Direct costs such as hospitals and other institutions, physicians and other health professionals, drugs, research, capital, and other health expenditures accounted for $72 billion.

• Indirect costs, measured as the value of lost productivity resulting from long-term and short-term disability and premature death, accounted for $85 billion.

• Hospital care was the largest direct cost ($26 billion), while research was the smallest ($752 million).

• Lost productivity resulting from long-term disability (the largest indirect cost component) cost society $38.3 billion in 1993.

• Cardiovascular diseases ($19.7 billion), musculoskeletal diseases ($17.8 billion), injuries ($14.3 billion), and cancer ($13.1 billion) had the highest total costs in 1993.

Greenlight Communications, Toronto, ON has developed a "Virtual Clinic" program. The Virtual Clinic is a service to be offered to subscribers which provides the consumer and their HealthLink medical team on-line access to their healthcare patient record and uses an electronic health record which is secure, accurate and comprehensive. In addition to the electronic record, HealthLink plans to provide the following special features as additional benefits: internet searches/push technology customized for the client, on-line health promotion, world-wide travel access to the patient record in emergencies, 24 hour home health line, on-line access to lab and imaging test results and medication history and information. It is expected that the service will be available to the first subscribers before the end of 1997.