Conference Board of Canada. (2010). A Call for Collaborative Leadership: Implementing Information and Communications Technologies in Canadian Health Systems. Retrieved from: http://www.conferenceboard.ca/e-Library/document.aspx?did=3802.

Canada lags international peers in its uptake of information and communications technologies (ICTs) in the health system. A collaborative leadership is needed to overcome existing barriers to ICT implementation and improve health system performance.

The implementation of information and communications technologies (ICTs) in the Canadian health system offers the potential to improve health outcomes, enhance system performance, and generate cost savings. Yet Canada lags its international peers in implementing ICTs. Canadian hospitals, for example, allocate only 1.5 per cent of their budgets to ICTs compared with the 4.4 per cent average across the Organisation for Co-operation and Development. In A Call for Collaborative Leadership, the Conference Board outlines the main challenges facing ICT implementation in Canada and reveals how a collaborative leadership approach can help overcome these hurdles and improve health system performance. Critically, the briefing identifies four specific actions that health organizations can take to facilitate the emergence of a collaborative leadership approach to implementing ICTs.