The Citizenship and Immigration health branch of Canada, popularly known as the CIC is responsible for the management and administration of the Department’s programs concerning the health of the people. It ensures that these programs are delivering well to the citizens and immigrants. The responsibilities of the health branch consist of administration of the panel members- such as CIC doctors, panel radiologists, panel physicians, and laboratories- who carry out IMEs or immigration medical examinations in Canada and in other countries.

The CIC renders health services via six health offices which are regional. For rendering these services, the health offices need to depend upon the immigration health examinations which the panel members and CIC doctors perform on the people who want to become permanent residents and other categories of people who want to stay as temporary residents in Canada. The report made by the IMEs helps the medical officers of the CIC to provide advocacy on the medical state of the people who are requesting residentship (whether permanent or temporary) in Canada.

The CIC is focusing on simple services which are easily accessible to the people to modernize the procedures of conducting the business. Also, it is committed to promoting, innovative, continuous, and adaptable improvements in the operations of the business to robust the integrity of the program and deliver service of good quality. Along with this, the CIC has brought in an electronic immigration medical examination system, known by the name eMedical, which is based on the web. This online EMI is a collaborative Canada-Australia project concerned with information technology and which will provide significant results in reducing the time required for processing, increasing the strength of the overall integrity of the program, and in providing several other advantages to the CIC, CIC doctors, panel members, and clients. The panel members who are working in nations where eMedical is used are required to complete and channel all the IMEs via the online system.

This handbook of panel members renders all the information, reference, and instructions related to the working procedures of the panel members and of the processes involved in the IMEs. The members of the panel comprised of radiologists, physicians, CIC doctors, laboratories and other professional health care experts who are involved in the processes of IME. All these members, collaboratively, form the panel members of the network of CIC.

You can go to the website of the CIC department at cic.gc.ca to get more information on the immigration program in Canada.

The issues which affect the health of the immigrants and the processes of immigration are subject to some alterations and modifications for incorporating advancements in the process. The developments in the handbook of panel members will be released whenever there is a need. The updated version of the handbook will be more advanced than the previous one. In all the instances, the online panel members’ handbook’s version is the most recent one and should be the one which must be consulted.