Our lead columnist, Dr. Art Hister, graduated from McGill University, in Montreal, Canada, in 1970. In 1971 he moved across the country to Vancouver to become the first full-time physician with the Pine Free Clinic, the first Canadian clinic established to deal exclusively with transient youth. Dr. Hister left the Pine Free Clinic in 1977 to enter private practice.
Our
regular health columnist, Claire Sowerbutt, monitors medical news on a daily basis.
Claire is a widely published and respected health and medical writer with hundreds
of articles published on the web and in print. Her career as a medical journalist
spans more than a decade, and as a non-medical professional with a wealth of
contacts in the medical profession, she brings a unique consumer-oriented insight
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how it could affect you.
Guenther Krueger is a PhD Candidate at Simon Fraser University with interests in research methodologies, computer mediated communication and palliative care. With a background in nursing and counseling psychology he has spent the past fifteen years working as a freelance medical journalist. Learn more about 
Electronic Medical Record - Electronic Patient Record - what are the differences and just who has access to what?
In Western society we tend to place special emphasis on certain domains that we consider particularly private. One of these is legal matters—the conversations you have with your lawyer are highly confidential—and health. So it’s no surprise that when the issue of electronic medical records comes up, privacy is everyone’s major concern.
Researcher Nina Boulus, is an expert on these digital systems. She’s completing her PhD examining the implementation issues from everyone’s point of view. She points out that there are actually two different systems as I mentioned in the previous column – Privacy and Your Medical Records (June 6). The institutional system, often referred to as an electronic medical record or EMR (although there are other names), and the electronic patient record or EPR which is the Google Health, Microsoft HealthVault, or Dossia types of models. Check them out, you might be surprised at what is already available.