Webinar Wednesday - Pan-Canadian Document Ontology: You should use it too!

Documents distributed by hospitals or exchanged between clinics in the community need to be classified. Most primary care clinics in Canada are already struggling with unclassified documents that need to be re-labelled and filed manually. This will worsen when community clinics begin sending documents digitally. Using a document classification system will automate filing and enable consistent and useful document titles. It will also reduce time spent by physicians opening new documents and finding old documents. BC is using a document classification system that is achieving these benefits and CHI is making a pan-Canadian version. I would like to explain what the document classification system is that BC is using and how other health systems can make one themselves.

Presented by:

Dr. Ian Bekker, Island Health

Dr. Ian Bekker is a dedicated Family Medicine physician with a focus on the frail elderly. He currently practises in long-term care and community geriatrics, providing medical care in both residential facilities and the community. 

Over the past decade, Dr. Bekker has made significant contributions to improving the health IT experience for family physicians in British Columbia. By developing solutions that reduce the time physicians spend categorizing documents in electronic medical records (EMR), he helped establish a provincial standard for document titles related to hospital and cancer screening. His vision is to extend these improvements across Canada, assisting Family Physicians who face similar challenges with time-consuming administrative tasks. 

Dr. Bekker has led numerous health IT initiatives, including the computerization of long-term care facilities, the creation of form standards, the replacement of fax workflow with digital solutions, and developing a pathway for physicians to send community documents directly into patients’ digital hospital charts. 

He is a former co-chair of the BC Health Information Standards Committee and has been on numerous Health IT projects and committees.  He has also completed extensive work in primary care disaster planning. Dr. Bekker holds medical leadership positions within long-term care at Island Health. 

Dr. Bekker welcomes discussions about his health IT projects and is interested in connecting with others regarding the use of MS Teams for clinical collaboration. 

Earn One Continuing Education Unit (CEU) for attending this webinar. 

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