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About the CHE

A Brief History of the CHE

Start-Up

The first CHE project was initiated in March 1999 under the Health Infostructure Support Program of the Canadian Office of Health and the Information Highway.

With matched funding from the Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research, the Universities of Alberta and Manitoba, the Capital Health Authority (Edmonton), the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority, InfoWard Inc. (now BHG Canda), and the Multimedia Advanced Computational Infrastructure initiative, a demonstration project was launched to explore uses of the Internet for supporting evidence-based decision-making in clinical practice settings.

During the start up phase, the CHE Demonstration Project was active in two locations, each with different health focus, Child Health in Winnipeg and Adult Health in Edmonton. The demonstration phase ended in May 2001, allowing both groups to move towards new collaborative opportunities. The Centre for Health Evidence is currently active in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.

Infostructure

The initial focus of the CHE was on infostructure. Appropriate Internet technologies were selected, installed, configured and deployed. CHE knowledge services were vetted by the health authorities, then tested, approved and installed in participating health regions.

In addition, CHE-supervised data collection protocols enabled point-of-use research about how information tools figure in the day-to-day work at the front lines of health care.

The CHE gained a wealth of experience with a wide range of barriers and facilitators to use of high-quality decision-support tools by busy health care practitioners.

Educational Interventions

In time, technical barriers to information access started to melt away with improvements to institutional networks and the rapid proliferation of high-speed access to the Internet. The CHE facilitated the creation of "informatics-rich" zones where information access was ubiquitous, simple and reliable.

Continued analysis of information transactions revealed that the remaining barriers to evidence-based decision-making had more to do with knowledge, skills, and attitudes than information access. Accordingly, the CHE shifted its focus to the development and study of educational interventions to support improvements in evidence-based decision-making. This mission now guides CHE projects and partnerships, and this experience has helped to guide our success in subsequent projects.

About Us: Who We Are | A Brief History | What We Do and Why | Where We're Going