The following is a review of developments affecting health care in Canada

Summer is over and its back to work. It has been a very busy summer, news-wise. We have chosen to present some of the more innovative news items. We are back to our monthly update schedule, so feel free to visit regularly.

The Capital Health Authority, Edmonton, AB has announced a partnership with TELUS and Hewlett-Packard to create a self-service portal for patients to view appointment schedules and access information such as immunization records. The self-service portal will also provide the tools to help patients more actively manage chronic conditions such as diabetes. The health region also recently began rolling out the first phase of netCARE that will give physicians and clinical staff lists of patient demographics and event history with Capital Health, lab test results, diagnostic reports—including discharge summaries—and a link to medication and allergy summaries from Alberta's provincial Pharmaceutical Information Network.

The Canadian Institute of Health Information (CIHI) released its fifth annual report, Health Care in Canada 2004. In the report, CIHI provides a comprehensive examination of the most common types of adverse events. The CIHI report indicates that 5.2 million Canadians, approximately 24% of the population, had experienced a preventable adverse event themselves or had a family member who had been through such an episode. CIHI estimated that 1.1 million days of hospital treatment a year are devoted to addressing adverse events and that those treatment days cost the health-care system approximately $750 million.