2016-03-17

AMA Dr2Dr and Messaging in AHS Facilities

The Alberta Medical Association (AMA) recently launched a Clinical Secure Messaging (CSM) application, called “dr2dr” for use by Alberta physicians. Clinicians may wonder how this relates to AHS Medical Staff, practitioners, medical residents, and medical students working within AHS facilities or with AHS medical records. At this time, AHS will not be supporting direct connections between dr2dr and any AHS Clinical Information System (CIS, such as eCLINICIAN, Sunrise Clinical Manager, MEDITECH). 
Clinical communications between AHS clinicians, especially when involving identifiable patient information, must use any available AHS-provisioned tools. Default to AHS CIS-based messaging when sender and receiver are users of an AHS CIS. Otherwise, AHS secure email or Netcare messaging should be tried. 

If these resources are unavailable or inappropriate (e.g., sender is does not have access to AHS-provisioned tools), then it may be appropriate to use a non-AHS CSM tool (such as AMA dr2dr) as long as the use complies with AHS policies and procedures cited in the guides. If the non-AHS CSM tool is to be used with an AHS CIS, then an evaluation and OIPC-approved addendum to the CIS privacy impact assessment must be arranged with AHS Privacy prior to implementation.
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