Issue 11 | Spring 2025

Welcome to the Spring 2025 edition of Connections! This semi-annual publication aims to provide our subscribers with helpful info and updates about the digital health solutions that are operated and/or managed by the HITS eHealth Office at Hamilton Health Sciences, which include ClinicalConnect (for healthcare providers) and ConnectMyHealth (for patients) in Ontario Health West Region, as well as eConsult (for healthcare providers in the HNHB region).

As always, if you have questions about our newsletter or want more information about us or our services, please email info@HITSeHealth.ca, call 905-577-8270, or visit us online at https://HITSeHealth.ca. 

Lots of work and updates to share since our last edition as you'll see below! If you know of healthcare providers based in Ontario Health West Region that don't yet use ClinicalConnect, have them email info@HITSeHealth.ca and we'd be pleased to discuss eligibility and workflow benefits.



Latest Portal Updates:

1. In November 2024, ClinicalConnect was integrated with the new Hospital Information System at Niagara Health and Hotel Dieu Shaver Health & Rehabilitation Centre.
2. In December 2024, following Bluewater Health's migration to the Oracle Hospital Information System used by other hospitals in the Erie St. Clair region, ClinicalConnect went live with this additional integration.
3. In February 2025, ClinicalConnect went live with an upgrade to Niagara Health's Mosaiq system to support ongoing access to oncology data from the hospital's Walker Family Cancer Centre.
4. In March 2025, a major upgrade to ClinicalConnect's Access Governance System (AGS) was completed. AGS is used at Participant Organizations to manage access to ClinicalConnect, as well as perform mandatory semi-annual attestations to confirm organizations' ongoing compliance with the ClinicalConnect Terms & Conditions.

Finally, as a regular reminder to the AGS user community, semi-annual attestations began on May 1, 2025. Complete your attestations as soon as possible using AGS - thank you!

Want more information about ClinicalConnect? https://HITSeHealth.ca/clinicalconnect

The ConnectMyHealth Program Office is pleased to announce that you can now share your health records with other ConnectMyHealth users, such as your family or caregivers.

Here’s how Record Sharing works!

• ConnectMyHealth allows you to share your health records with up to 10 ConnectMyHealth users; for example, your family member or caregiver. You must have your own account to not only view your own records, but also records shared with you by another person.
• When sharing your records using ConnectMyHealth, you must know the email address associated with the person’s ConnectMyHealth account; if they don’t already have their own account, ConnectMyHealth includes functionality to ‘invite’ the person to register for their own account.
• You can control what types of health records you share with each person (called a “Shared Access User”). By default, any health records you marked “Confidential” by applying a Consent Directive at a participating hospital(s) will not be shared, however you can decide to share these records as well if you’d like. You also control how long you’d like the Shared Access User (your family, caregiver etc.) to have access to your records for. You’ll make these selections as you complete the Record Sharing process from within ConnectMyHealth.
• Complete instructions of how to share your records are available from within the portal to guide you through the set-up process.

Other Updates:

• Data from Niagara Health, Hotel Dieu Shaver Health & Rehabilitation Centre and Bluewater Health is once again available in ConnectMyHealth! For a complete list of the data available in ConnectMyHealth, please visit the ConnectMyHealth information website's Data Availability webpage.

Want more info about ConnectMyHealth? https://HITSeHealth.ca/connectmyhealth

The HITS eHealth Office continues to proudly support the deployment of eConsult in the Hamilton Niagara Haldimand Brant (HNHB) region. eConsult enables physicians, nurse practitioners, and midwives to ask a specialist a clinical question through a secure, virtual platform. Often responses come within a few days and can even eliminate the need for an in-person referral. In HNHB, there were 8,603 eConsults sent in fiscal year 2024-2025.

Interested in joining eConsult? Complete the intake form today!

Help Us Share Your Experience

In HNHB we’re looking for eConsult users (sender, receivers, or both!) who would like to share their experience or testimonial regarding the use and value of eConsult. Your experience will help encourage others to join the program and enhance timely access to specialist advice for patients across HNHB.

Specialists – How Do You Use eConsult? 

Specialists continue to use eConsult to ask questions of each other.

If you know a specialist who would either like to send eConsults to other specialists as described above, or provide eConsult advice to primary care providers, please share this expression of interest form so they too can join the eConsult program.

eConsult case examples, testimonials or user feedback can be shared to eConsult@HITSeHealth.ca. We look forward to hearing from you! 

Want more info about eConsult? https://HITSeHealth.ca/econsult

One of the most important filters in ClinicalConnect is called the Encounter Filter. Why is it so important? Because what you have it set to determines how much data is presented in each module. By default, the Encounter filter is set to "All Regional Encounters" for all applicable modules in order to view data from provincial repositories (if available). The other options are explained below, but changing this filter from All Regional Encounters will limit the sources of data being returned in your search. That may speed up how quickly the search is performed, but may not present all data that could be available for your patient.

• Encounter - Displays data only for the selected encounter/visit at the selected healthcare facility.
• Patient - Displays data from all encounters for the selected source hospital system (which may have multiple facilities).
• All Regional Encounters - Displays data from all encounters across all source systems available in the portal, including data from provincial repositories (if available).

Name: Mike Searle

Role: eHealth Program Coordinator

Mike is no stranger to technology and application support, having spent 40 years working in different capacities within this space. He started his career in programming and gradually transitioned to providing user support for Ontario’s Land & Air Emergency Health Services. Beginning in 2012, he leveraged his extensive expertise to contribute to the operation of the HITS eHealth Office’s digital health solutions. He has filled the role of eHealth Program Coordinator for the last several years, where his focus has been on the technical operation of ClinicalConnect. Mike’s favourite aspect of his work is the teamwork, the collaboration and the camaraderie he shares with his colleagues. 

Now Mike is embarking on another exciting chapter of life, having just retired last week! He plans to spend more time with his aging dogs as well as taking the time to do some gardening.

Everyone at the HITS eHealth Office and colleagues he’s worked with over the years undoubtedly thank Mike for his contributions, knowledge and humour, and wish him all the best!