First, improved primary care is about quality, through more integrated services and perhaps new funding arrangements and more appropriate and efficient use of prevention practices. We will need your help, your advice and your participation as we do that. Second, enhancing health research is about quality, because that is where the cures, treatments and technologies of tomorrow will be created, both reducing demand and improving care. That is why we are making new investments to contribute to the quantity and quality of health research in Canada. Third, as your own background document for this conference makes clear, bringing more and better evidence to bear on decisions is crucial whether by providers or by patients or managers or policy-makers.
Evidence offers the prospect of improving the quality of health care.
That is why we are committed to closing many of the gaps that now exist in the information relating to medicine, as well as improving its quality and the use to which it is put, including through working towards a country-wide health information system. We must develop reliable, complete and objective information upon which to make judgments and upon which to make policy. I can mention, as well, the restoration of confidence in Canada's blood system and I am happy to report we are well along the way. That is about restoring confidence in the quality of health care. What is more, modern medicine has made care in the home in many instances a much more effective, efficient and welcome alternative to staying in hospitals.