Telus 2010 Annual Report Download - page 25

TELUS 2010 annual report . 21
This growth should continue as even more private and public
sector employers adopt our integrated system.
We are building on this foundation and our strong relationships
with provincial, regional and municipal healthcare organizations
to deliver new health information solutions for practitioners.
In May, we launched TELUS Health Space, Canada’s first
online platform powered by Microsoft that gives consumers
the ability to securely generate, store and control their health
information in a safe environment and share it with their family
and care providers. Last fall, more than 2,000 TELUS team
members took part in an employee trial focusing on heart health.
In January 2011, we launched an external pilot program with
a partner, the first of its kind in Canada, in Quebec City, where
patients have access to their electronic medical records from
their physician through their Health Space account. This paves
the way for new solutions, including personal health records, that
could soon be available electronically to millions of Canadians.
From patients to doctors and clinics to acute care, we
are at the forefront of healthcare IT, enabling information to flow
across the continuum of care. We deploy technologies that enable
hospitals to aggregate patient data, allowing doctors to make
timely decisions right at the bedside or point of care. This timely
exchange of information is fundamentally changing healthcare
delivery and challenging the status quo, while bringing savings
and better patient outcomes. Data is delivered to healthcare
providers and consumers in a safe and secure fashion. And our
mobile technology allows us to deliver data remotely, helping
to realize the goal of anytime, anywhere healthcare.
TELUS has invested more than $800 million in the past
three years in healthcare technology. The TELUS Health Solutions
team is working with healthcare partners to drive a transforma-
tion to help achieve industry-critical cost and efficiency benefits.
We are leveraging our national reach, broadband networks and
expertise to capture growth in the multi-billion-dollar Canadian
healthcare-related telecom and IT sector.
Should TELUS buy a content provider
to stay competitive with its peers?
ROBERT MCFARLANE
Executive Vice-President
and Chief Financial Officer,
Corporate and Regulatory Strategy
With Shaw buying the television assets
of Canwest at the end of 2010 and
BCE’s pending acquisition of CTV in 2011, control of content has
been a keenly discussed, high-profile issue for the industry, the
regu lator and TELUS. Our company’s differentiated approach
is consistent with our content strategy, which is to aggregate,
integrate and make accessible the best content and applications
for our 12 million customers, through whichever device or
platform they choose.
TELUS believes that it is not necessary to own content
to make it accessible to our customers on an economically
attractive basis. We also believe that owning content could limit
the audience for that content through exclusive arrangements
or have a potential detrimental impact on other content supplier
relationships. Our core competencies do not currently include
producing and distributing content, and to attempt this could
expose our company to additional operational risk.
In addition, it is important to realize that the Canadian
content assets involved in recent acquisition transactions are
primarily legacy broadcast media properties. They do not neces-
sarily reflect the shift to new media and user-driven interactive
applications such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube and the
newest enabling platforms such as Android and Apple that allow
consumers to personalize and consume content on demand.
The CRTC has scheduled a public policy hearing in June 2011
on the effects of consolidation and vertical integration in the
Canadian broadcasting industry, with the aim of putting in place
norms for commercial interaction that would provide all players
with a fair opportunity to negotiate terms and conditions, including
rates, related to the carriage of programming, services and
content. TELUS is encouraged that the CRTC has recognized
the importance of competition in the carrier market and is
seeking to implement appropriate safeguards against self-dealing
and anti-competitive behaviour with respect to content.
While many of our peers are investing billions of dollars to
own and produce content, TELUS continues to focus investments
on enhancing our advanced broadband and wireless networks
and service capabilities so that our customers can readily
access all of the content available in this increasingly Internet-
connected and content-rich world.