COVID-19 Virtual Health Toolkit

OVH and the Digital Health Strategy Office at PHSA have developed a virtual health toolkit for use during the COVID-19 pandemic. It features solutions that you may already have so you can continue to provide care to your patients and keep them at home.

PHSA virtual health toolkit

The virtual health solutions endorsed by PHSA and the Office of Virtual Health (OVH) for COVID-19 are listed in the sidebar on the right. Follow the links to get more information and support for each solution.

Privacy and security for all virtual health solutions: While some of the recommended solutions in the PHSA toolkit have completed Privacy Impact Assessments and others have assessments in progress, all solutions in this toolkit are endorsed by the Ministry of Health and PHSA for immediate use under the emergency response due to COVID-19.

Provincial virtual health toolkit

The provincial toolkit is a pdf document with detailed information about solutions being used by PHSA and health authorities across B.C.

Obtaining patient consent

Verbal or digital consent from the patient is acceptable before use of all virtual health solutions. Requirements are:

Notification of risks have been provided (see PDF document)

Reasonable efforts have been made to validate the patient's identity (see Identity Validation (PDF)).

Guideline documents

OVH verbal consent guidelines: outlines best practices for obtaining client/patient consent for virtual health visits during COVID-19
COVID-19 Virtual Health Quick Start Guide: provides key information to get started with virtual health

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More resources for COVID-19

This toolkit from Accreditation Canada and Health Standards Organization has checklists to help patients, health professionals and digital teams prepare for virtual health visits.

Guidelines for practitioners to submit requisitions for lab tests and medical images:

Health Authority Labs
Medical Imaging sites (radiology/ultrasound)
LifeLabs
Bulletin from LifeLabs to practitioners that may be sending requisitions to their labs

Wet signature options for health authority prescribers working from home

How to disinfect shared mobile devices in health care settings

Data storage: This Ministerial order temporarily suspends the privacy law requirement for data storage in Canada. On May 12, 2021, the order was extended to December 31, 2021.