The government estimated that fewer than 5 per cent of prescriptions were sent through PrescribeIT. Most are still sent by fax or on paper.Cole Burston/The Globe and Mail
Ottawa says a national digital service to send prescriptions from doctors offices to pharmacies – costing more than $250-million since its inception – has been shut down because the program failed to replace fax machines and provinces and territories would not share the cost of running it.
Canada Health Infoway, a non-profit funded by the government that has run the service PrescribeIT since 2017, announced Thursday the program would shut down on May 29.
It said the program would be replaced by a “national e-prescribing standard” that it hoped other health-technology companies would adopt.
“Canada Health Infoway will continue to maintain the standard to support national consistency and enable provinces, territories, and vendors to adopt and apply it in ways that align with their respective priorities and timelines, consistent with national approaches to secure health information exchange,” chief executive officer Michael Green said in a statement.
Although thousands of pharmacies and doctor’s offices across the country had signed up with PrescribeIT, few were using it. The government estimated that fewer than 5 per cent of prescriptions were sent through PrescribeIT. Most are still sent by fax or on paper.
The Globe and Mail reported earlier this week that Canada Health Infoway had tried to find a private company to take over the service in recent months. But that process was not finished before the non-profit’s board – made up largely of federal, provincial and territorial government representatives – moved to cancel the program altogether.
The service had largely been funded by the federal government. Canada Health Infoway’s public records suggest PrescribeIT’s annual costs were $35-million in recent years, adding up to more than $250-million since 2017.
Some of those funds went to Telus Corp. subsidiary Telus Health, which was the main developer of PrescribeIT. The Globe previously reported that Telus retains ownership of much of the intellectual property of PrescribeIT.
Canada introduces legislation to create a more connected health care system
Guillaume Bertrand, spokesperson for Health Minister Marjorie Michel, said the service’s low adoption and the lack of a “federal-provincial-territorial cost-sharing model” ultimately ended the program.
“Since its introduction, and despite the extensive work of our partner Infoway, the adoption remains below anticipated levels,” Mr. Bertrand wrote in an e-mail.
He said the government’s focus is now on the recently introduced Bill S-5, which aims to make it easier for patients and health care providers to share and access health data, including medical records.
It sets common standards to link health databases and prohibits companies from blocking the transfer of data, which is an issue that has been flagged by the federal Competition Bureau as making it difficult for doctor’s offices to switch software providers.
PrescribeIT had begun charging pharmacies a $0.20-per-perscription fee in 2025 to use the service, which the Canadian Pharmacists Association has cited as a reason for its low use among pharmacies.
James Owen, a family physician at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto, said he had used PrescribeIT and was in the process of onboarding his colleagues when they got news this week the program was being cancelled.
He said it was hard to say why more physicians hadn’t gotten on board with the tool, but it takes time for anyone to learn and get used to new technology.
He said he hoped something would replace PrescribeIT so family physicians like him didn’t have to rely on outdated and inefficient tools.
“It feels like we are already long overdue for health care to make the transition to secure electronic communication and killing the fax machine.”