July 2026
Tips and advice on EMRs, AI and digital health tools you can use NOW
From the Chief Medical Officer
What makes the OMD Educates: Digital Health Conference unique
The OMD Educates: Digital Health Conference (October 1-2, 2026) is where digital health meets real-world health care with a focus on practical, Ontario-focused solutions. As an attendee, you’re not just hearing about what’s possible; you’ll learn about what’s working right now and how to apply it in your own setting. From AI and cybersecurity to workflow optimization and patient engagement, every session is designed to help you turn ideas into actionable takeaways. The event offers something for everyone – clinicians, nurse practitioners, nurses, allied health professionals, administrative and clinic staff, and health system decision makers.
Register today for early bird pricing and discover how the conference can help your team spend less time on administration and more time caring for patients. Watch the video to learn what sets our conference apart from others!
OMD congratulates Dr. Chandi Chandrasena on her 2026 Digital Health Canada Leadership Award. Her work as Chief Medical Officer is invaluable to bringing the physician lens to our initiatives and ensure that they are relevant and improve the digital health experience for all clinicians.
Digital Health Education & Knowledge Translation
If you haven’t yet registered for our 2026 Digital Health Conference at Exhibition Place on October 1-2, take advantage of our early bird promotion ($100 in savings) before it ends on August 21! For even more savings, register as a group! Join us to discover practical tools, proven strategies, and emerging technologies that can help reduce administrative burden, manage technological overload, optimize workflows, and enhance patient care. Learn from peers, industry experts, and digital health leaders and leave with ideas that you can put into practice right away. See why clinicians keep coming back to the conference year after year!
Looking to sponsor or exhibit? The conference offers opportunities for heightened engagement, visibility, and exposure, including:
- Multi-channel and customizable sponsorship opportunities
- Exhibit in the Vendor Showcase and Start-Up Zone, with strategically timed breaks to drive booth traffic
- Exclusive sponsored speaking opportunities (limited availability)
- Marketing opportunities, such as bag inserts, email blasts, social media callouts, email blasts and more
View the Sponsorship Prospectus. Much like our conference attendees, over 85% of our exhibitors return year after year! Sign up to become a sponsor or exhibitor today.
Want OntarioMD to come and speak to your group, district, OHT, or PCN directly? Send a request to omd.events@ontariomd.com.
For practical tips and resources, including webinars, toolkits, and more, on using your EMR and digital health tools, visit OMDEducates.com.
AI Tools: Beyond Scribes
Excited about AI, but overwhelmed by the information out there? Whether you’re a family physician, community consulting specialist, nurse practitioner or a clinic/practice manager or owner, OMD is your go-to resource for using any AI tool in clinical practice. Here’s what we’re working on:
- First province-wide community clinician survey on the use of AI – from scribes to clinical decision support (CDS) tools and more. We’re excited to share the results of the survey, the largest conducted about AI use by Ontario clinicians, in the coming weeks!
- AI-CDS pilot to improve quality standards for type 2 diabetes. The pilot provided an opportunity to test Khure Health’s Artificial Intelligence Clinical Decision Support (AI-CDS) tool as a practical solution to identify and manage patients with type 2 diabetes and optimize care for these patients. The pilot involved two family practices, 15 primary care clinicians and 500 patients. OntarioMD worked with partners Ontario Health, the Mid-West Toronto OHT, and Khure Health with funding and non-clinical project support from Boehringer Ingelheim Canada on this insightful initiative. The lessons learned will inform wider adoption of AI-CDS tools by Ontario primary care clinicians.
- AI inbox assistants for practical help for busy clinics. With grant support from the Ontario Medical Association, OMD studied how these tools can help clinics manage incoming reports, faxes and other documents. Can they flag urgent items, route work faster, and reduce end-of-day inbox review? Look for the upcoming AI inbox assistant study report.
New AI scribe vendors have been added to the Ontario AI Scribe Program! For an easy comparison of the program’s vendors, check out the handy vendor matrix.
If you’re currently negotiating or renewing a contract with one of the vendors recently added to the program’s list (for example, Heidi Health, MD Voice, or others), or nearing the end of your free trial, spare yourself the research hassle. Sign up for more favourable terms and pricing with the Ontario AI Scribe Program. AI scribes hold great value for family physicians, specialists, and nurse practitioners alike, so don’t miss out! Hear what Dr. Darren Larsen has to say about them.
For more information on the Ontario AI Scribe Program, visit the OMD Practice Hub for the Vendor of Record list, program video, and frequently asked questions on the Ontario AI Scribe Program.
Peer Leader Tip
When patients bring AI into the exam room
This month’s tip comes from Dr. Mario Elia, a family physician with the London Lambeth Family Health Organization.
Patients have always come to appointments with preconceived notions about their health conditions. Today, many are walking into exam rooms with diagnoses, treatment options, and medical advice generated by AI. What’s a family doctor to do? Here are tips on how to have a productive conversation with patients:
- Acknowledge their efforts and ask questions. Patients are either referring to AI results on their own to keep organized or providing a copy to their doctors for review. Ask open-ended questions, such as whether they came across anything that worried them before their visit. Rather than dismissing AI-generated information outright, try to see it as a sign that patients are more engaged in their health.
- Explain AI’s limitations. These conversations present an opportunity to inform patients about the risks of sharing personal health information with commercial AI tools and receiving inaccurate information from them.
- Lead with humility, honesty, and trust. Try to avoid a defensive response to prove your expertise. Be frank about what you know and don’t know – your patients will appreciate you for it.
OMD Peer Leaders comprise a network of over 50 physicians (family doctors, specialists), nurse practitioners, nurses and clinic managers. As expert users of OMD-certified EMRs and other digital health and virtual care tools, they work with our Advisory Service Team to help you with your EMR and digital workflows.
If you’d like advice from a Peer Leader that is tailored to your clinic, please contact peer.leader.program@ontariomd.com. Discover what our Peer Leader Program and Advisory Service can do for you.
OMD Advisor Tip
New ColonCancerCheck Screening Guidelines, FIT Test
As of July 1, 2026, Ontario Health (Cancer Care Ontario) has updated the ColonCancerCheck program to include:
- Revised screening guidelines for average-risk individuals, beginning at age 45 and supported by updated family history recommendations
- A transition to In-Common Laboratories, a new laboratory service provider
- The introduction of a new fecal immunochemical test (FIT) kit
- A new requisition form.
For more information, visit: https://www.cancercareontario.ca/en/guidelines-advice/cancer-continuum/screening/colon-cancer-check-resource-hub
OMD Advisors develop useful tools and provide valuable advice to clinicians anywhere in Ontario. They can help you with provincial digital health tools, not just EMRs. Take advantage of these services, at no cost to you, before calling anyone else!
From the General Counsel and CPO
New Federal Direction on Privacy and AI in Health Care
Last month, the federal government introduced Bill C-36, the Protecting Privacy and Consumer Data Act, unveiled its national AI strategy, AI for All, and announced a $100 million investment in VITAL, a new collaborative health data platform based at Unity Health in Toronto. VITAL will connect more than 160 hospitals across Ontario, Alberta, and Quebec, serving over 20 million Canadians.
Together, these initiatives signal a clear federal commitment to strengthening privacy protections and public trust. As a cornerstone of the AI strategy, VITAL will securely connect de-identified hospital data across Canada to support research, clinical trials, and AI-enabled health technologies within a robust governance and privacy framework to protect patient privacy and maintain patient control over their health data. The AI strategy also highlights health care as a priority sector for AI innovation and investment, while emphasizing safe, transparent, and accountable deployment. While Bill C-36 is currently before Parliament, it marks a shift toward stronger privacy protections, greater organizational accountability, and increased expectations for responsible AI use.
For Ontario primary care clinicians, these federal initiatives do not change existing obligations under the Personal Health Information Protection Act (PHIPA) but reinforce the increasing use of AI-enabled tools in clinical practice and the need for transparency, privacy, and accountability.
To date, provincial attention has been focused on mitigating the clinical, legal, privacy and security risks related to AI scribes through the Ontario AI Scribe Program. More recently, OntarioMD, Ontario Health and the Centre for Effective Practice have been examining AI Clinical Decision Support Systems. The conversations on AI tools in health care are just getting started, with many novel opportunities to support clinical workflow available. However, before adopting a new digital tool, clinicians should ask how patient data is collected, used, and protected, to ensure the technology supports rather than replaces their clinical judgment.
Read more privacy and security tips
HRM Improvements
Take control of your inbox: Manage HRM eNotifications
Looking to cut down on the volume of notifications and focus on the information that matters? Join your fellow clinicians and sign up to turn off HRM eNotifications. To date, over 581,692 eNotifications have been stopped.
Still receiving paper (faxed) reports? Visit our Sending Facilities page to submit a stop paper request. Find the relevant facility on the page and click on the green button for contact details for each organization to manage your stop paper request.
Your HRM experience is important to us. Don’t hesitate to contact support@ontariomd.com with any questions.
OMD in the News
- Explore our AI-CDS insights in our blog, “Beyond Documentation: Harnessing AI to Close Ontario’s Evidence-to-Practice Gap” to learn how the tools are helping to deliver real-time insights at the point of care.
- Read the article, “From Friction to Flow: Redesigning the Clinic for a Digital Age”, in the July issue of Canadian Healthcare Technology. Authored by Dr. Chandi Chandrasena, Chief Medical Officer, Simon Ling, Executive Director, Partnerships and Stakeholders, Reza Talebi, Director, Knowledge Translation and Education, and Abbas Zavar, Digital Health Research Lead, the article is the third in a four-part series on OMD’s strategy for digitally optimized practices.
- This month, the Medical Post featured OMD’s efforts in articles on:
- Refining the delivery of HRM reports in “Canada’s War on Physician Paperwork”
- Providing clinicians with free services to optimize technological solutions in “Reducing No Shows”
- Matt Leduc, Executive Director, Products, Integrations & Service Management, and Aidan Lee, Executive Director, Technology Solutions and Vendor Accountability, shared their insights on practical AI and the reality of data standards in an interview with Healthcare IT Today.
- OMD’s Privacy & Security Training for the Healthcare Sector and its value to clinicians was highlighted in the article, “Ontario’s AI Health Push: Training Aims to Bridge Innovation and Privacy”, by the Hughes Report.
Partner News
Better Outcomes Registry & Network (BORN) Ontario
Information critical to perinatal care is often fragmented across multiple systems, paper records, and disconnected workflows. BORNConnect – digital Ontario Perinatal Record + (dOPR+) – is a new vision for connected interoperable digital records to support better information sharing, streamline workflows, and improve care for families across pregnancy and early life. Share your input to help us build a system that reflects the realities of care and supports high-quality, patient-centred experiences across care settings.
Need EMR Help?
Your EMR should be a benefit, not a burden. In addition to our OMD Advisory Service and Peer Leaders, OMD has COMPLIMENTARY resources to help you use your certified EMR better. Find out how we can help you.
Join a Community of Practice (CoP)! CoP is a virtual place for EMR, AI, and digital health tool users, including clinicians and office staff, to share their knowledge, discover upcoming changes, ask questions, and learn from vendors and other users. Find out more about OMD Communities of Practice.
Upcoming AI Scribe CoP: We invite you to join us on September 23, 2026, featuring guest speaker, Ariane Siegel, General Counsel & Chief Privacy Officer. Learn about AI scribe consent, privacy, and security, and gain practical insights into the safe and effective use of AI-powered documentation tools.
Important Reminders
If you plan on:
- Moving, joining or taking over a practice
- Changing internet plans or providers
- Changing EMRs
Contact support@ontariomd.com at least two (2) weeks in advance to ensure you continue to receive HRM reports.