Canadian Primary Care Sentinel Surveillance Network

CPCSSN is an innovator, creating a surveillance system with a new source of data.  We are generating knowledge for improved health care for patients at the practice level and for policy makers at the system level.

The Canadian Primary Care Sentinel Surveillance Network (CPCSSN) is a pan-Canadian electronic medical record surveillance system—the first of its kind in Canada. CPCSSN is a database of more than a million de-identified patient records from participating family doctors and nurse practitioners across Canada. These records are collected to inform research, chronic disease surveillance, policy-making and practice improvement, ultimately improving the quality of patient care and identifying novel risk factors for chronic disease. Dr. Richard Birtwhistle, a professor at Queen’s School of Medicine, was the Chair and principal investigator of CPCSSN.

To find out more about CPCSSN, browse its website. For a more high-level overview, an (e)Affect article profiling Dr. Birtwhistle and his work with CPCSSN is available online.