Health

The House of Commons Standing Committee on Health met to study the termination of the PrescribeIT e-prescribing program and its implications for digital health, with appearances from Telus Health, Canada Health Infoway, and officials from the Department of Health.

Ratcho Batchvarov, Vice-President of Provider Solutions at Telus Health, stated that Telus received $98 million over nine years to build and operate the PrescribeIT platform, which processed 180 million transactions with 99.9% uptime. He emphasized that Telus owned 85% of the underlying intellectual property before the contract, and that the remaining 15% was developed to Infoway’s specifications. Batchvarov said Telus did not bid on a 2024 expression of interest to take over the program because it was already the technology provider under contract, and he declined to provide a detailed financial breakdown or information on outsourced workers, citing commercial confidentiality. He recommended that the committee use the access-to-information process for further details and noted that Telus supports Bill S-5 as a framework for national interoperability standards.

Michael Green, President and CEO of Canada Health Infoway, reported that total federal investment in PrescribeIT was $250 million, with $98 million paid to Telus and the remainder spent on integrating with electronic medical record vendors, pharmacy systems, and provincial assets. He stated that 95% of pharmacies and vendors were technically ready, but actual prescription volume was low, leading the board to decide in November 2025 to transition to an open standards approach rather than continue the single-platform model. Green said the decision was made by Infoway’s board, which includes federal, provincial, and territorial deputy ministers, and that the transition aims to improve adoption by allowing provinces to implement solutions aligned with local priorities. He committed to providing requested documents, including financial statements and performance data, but could not give exact figures for post-November 2025 spending or his own salary from memory.

Jocelyne Voisin, Senior Assistant Deputy Minister at the Health Policy Branch, confirmed that total federal funding for PrescribeIT was $298 million and that the department conducted a 2023 assessment that showed the program was unlikely to become self-sustaining. She said the decision to end the program was made by Infoway’s board, not by Health Canada, and that the department authorized continued funding after November 2025 only to ensure an orderly transition for existing users. Voisin acknowledged that adoption remained below 5% of prescriptions nationally and that the program did not meet its opioid-reduction targets, but she argued the investment built a foundation for e-prescribing. She agreed to table briefing notes, transition costs, and the 2023 assessment, and stated that the new standards-based approach will be more cost-effective because provinces can choose their own solutions.

David Jones, Director of the Digital Health and Health System Division, confirmed that some performance targets for PrescribeIT were met and that data sovereignty is protected through contractual data residency requirements and cybersecurity standards embedded in health systems. Elizabeth Toller, Director General of the Health Care Strategies Directorate, explained that low physician adoption was due to workflow irritants, such as multiple logins, that made the system less convenient than e-fax, and that provinces lacked policy levers to incentivize use. She said the new open standard, to be released in May 2026, will reduce vendor costs by eliminating the need for custom integrations across jurisdictions, and that $50 million will be provided to Infoway for its core interoperability mandate. Toller disagreed with the characterization of PrescribeIT as a total failure, noting it enabled millions of secure transactions and set the stage for future e-prescribing.

After the witnesses concluded, the committee debated a motion by Dan Mazier to order the production of unredacted documents from Health Canada and Canada Health Infoway, including contribution agreements, intellectual property records, adoption data, revenue from the per-prescription fee, viability analyses, termination cost documents, and a list of vendors. The motion also required that any redactions be limited to commercially confidential information with a summary of redacted content. Doug Eyolfson requested that debate be deferred to the next meeting to allow time for review, but the committee voted on the motion and it was adopted.