Jim Ramsay, official with AIM, says the service is affordable to cash-strapped health districts, health service providers and first nations groups(2). How this business can surface out of nowhere when we have a crown corporation called SHIN (Saskatchewan Health Information Network) is quite a mystery.

SHIN was given $40 million to develop a province wide health information network where health care agencies would be able to share medical records, and as at today we don't know what this crown corporation has been up(3). The projects currently listed by SHIN don't include any partnership with either AIM or MediSolution(4). Further, Saskatchewan health care districts have been the puppets of this government and as a consequence the entry of this web site into the governmental health care market can have occurred only with the tacit consent of the Minister of Health Pat Atkinson.

What is more puzzling is that this web site would allow districts and health providers to share their patient records and at this time I don't have confirmation that The Health Information Protection Act has been proclaimed to be effective(5).

Endnotes

1. MediSolution signs $2.5-million contract to launch Internet-based technology to bring better health care to Saskatchewan communities and First Nations reserves http://micro.newswire.ca/releases/September2000/06/c1114.html/84663-0

2. Sask. website to store medical records, CBC Saskatchewan, http://www.sask.cbc.ca/ Web Posted | Sep 6 2000 8:59 PM EDT

3. Associate Minister of Health Judy Junor: defending the SHIN flop at the Legislature, by Mario deSantis, April 13, 2000

4. SHIN's Projects, this site was accessed on September 8, 2000 http://www.shin.sk.ca/projects/project.htm

5. The Health Information Protection Act, Government of Saskatchewan, http://www.gov.sk.ca/health/publications/hipamain.htm

References MediSolutions corporate webs site.

MediSolutions site map

This Alberta press release describes the use of the software from MediSolutions

This March document explains what MediSolutions is and how it works.

The client download page for MediSolutions (editor's note: this site and its software are microsoft based that would make its security level on a scale of 1 to 10 about a "2".)

Followup: See Letters, and Mario deSantis' effort to clarify what is going on.