People. Technology. These are the two elements that are the heart and soul of the health care system. If you are concerned about your health, you should also be interested in how things work in Canada. And, if you’re outside of Canada, you might learn some lessons for our experiences. But first, in order to make sense of things, you need to understand how technology is introduced and the decisions that are made in order to implement it. It’s also crucial to make the connections between the two elements. People and technology work together. Each affect the other. If you are a health care professional you are involved in this all the time. If you are a consumer, you will be affected sooner or later. No matter who you are and how you relate to health care, you should be informed.

Five years ago, Dr. Ellen Balka decided to put together a project to take a look at the many ways technology impacts with people within Canadian health care. Dr. Balka wears several hats. She is a Senior Scholar with the Michael Smith Foundation, a Senior Research Scientist at the Centre for Clinical Epidemiology & Evaluation in Vancouver, Canada, and a Professor in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University. With a lot of experience and world-wide contacts she was able to successfully put together a proposal to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC, referred to as “shirk”) and was awarded $3 million. The specific aim of the project was to examine how technology is being used in relation to health information.

I have been involved in this project from its inception and am going to use a series of columns to highlight some of the projects that were done within the overall ACTION for Health Project as it came to be named. It’s been fascinating for me to view not only the promise, but also the pitfalls and frustrations of having a large group of highly specialized people tackle some of the most pressing and important challenges we are facing within the health care system in Canada.

The ACTION for Health project was comprehensive, with 19 co-investigators and 20 organizations in five countries looking at the many ways technology impacts on people like you. I’ll be giving you stories from the Canadian end of things, and while I can’t promise to answer the many questions I’ve raised in this introduction, I can guarantee that you’ll learn a few things not only about how people try to answer them, but some of the responses they’ve already received.