Imagine No More Health Data Siloes - Accessible, Lossless, Reliable Past Medical History for Every Patient
The Numbers No One Can Ignore
Every year, Canadian physicians waste 18.5 million hours
on avoidable paperwork—time worth roughly C$1.3 billion
in clinical capacity
( CFIB 2023
).
Closer to home, an Ontario Medical Association survey
found that 40 % of physicians are considering retirement
within five years—putting as many as 4.4 million
Ontarians at risk of losing primary care.
Meanwhile, the province has already poured C$8 billion
into electronic-health-record (EHR) projects, yet only 38 % of family doctors can share a basic patient summary electronically( ON Auditor-General 2016
; CIHI/Commonwealth Fund 2022
).
Where the Money—and the Risk—Actually Go
a) Duplicate tests. Nationally, 115,000 low-value imaging exams were avoided over five years thanks to targeted campaigns, but CIHI warns that Ontario could still save up to C$83 million every year by eliminating redundant labs and scans ( CIHI & Choosing Wisely 2022 ).
b) Litigation & compliance. The College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO) logged 3,607 record-keeping investigations between 2013-2020; 17 % involved repeat offenders, and 98 % of disciplinary actions stemmed directly from documentation failures ( CPSO Dialogue 2021 ).
c) Burnout-driven retirement. Ontario family doctors spend an average of 19 hours per week on admin tasks ( OCFP 2023 survey ). The same burden is the top-cited factor pushing physicians toward early retirement.
Why Current “Store & Fetch” Vendors Are Hitting a Wall
- 8- to 16-week wait times for chart fulfilment (patient-advocacy forums, OMA complaint data).
- Per-page fee models that routinely exceed PHIPA’s cost-recovery guidelines, alienating both doctors and patients.
- Data-integrity breakdowns —mixed-patient pages documented in Alberta OIPC Order H2008-001 ( OIPC AB order ).
- Zero developer APIs: what you get is still a single, 400-page PDF.
Policy Tailwinds You Can’t Afford to Miss
• The 2024 Digital Health Interoperability Task Force
calls for national standards and certification.
• The Health Care Unburdened
grant program has already issued multi-site pilots worth $1 million
to test AI tools that cut physician paperwork
( KHSC press release 2024
).
• Ontario’s 2024 Burden-Reduction Report floats mandatory EMR certification
for interoperability—echoing U.S. ONC criteria.
Early adopters who are open-standard & audit-ready
will be first in line for procurement and subsidy.
A New Model: AI-Native Custodianship
To solve the bottleneck, we need more than a bigger warehouse—we need a lossless, AI-indexed health-data fabric that any certified system can query in real time. Key design pillars:
- Cryptographic, page-level provenance. Every exported file carries a hash so downstream systems can verify originality—no more “chart soup.”
- Instant comprehension. Large-language-model (LLM) routines surface a physician-ready problem list, med list and five-year clinical timeline on ingest , turning 400 pages into a two-minute read.
- Self-serve portals. Patients, lawyers and successor clinicians get role-based access in seconds; no DVDs, couriers or fax fallback.
- Built-in retention calculators. The UI flags when adult and paediatric records cross statutory thresholds, offering one-click, PHIPA-compliant purge or archival.
- Open APIs. Any EMR, hospital HIS or researcher can pull structured FHIR bundles—keeping us future-proof against evolving certification rules.
The Economic Upside of Doing It Right
Reclaiming even five
admin hours per family physician saves roughly C$260 million
in clinical value each year (18.5 M hours ÷ 52 weeks × C$80/h blended rate).
Provincial analysts estimate that cutting duplicate tests and scans could free up another C$300 million
—money that can be redirected to frontline staffing.
Most critically, reducing burnout delays retirement: for every 1 % of doctors who stay just two extra years, 50,000
Ontarians keep their family physician.
Call to Collaboration
We’re assembling a pilot cohort of forward-thinking clinics, health-system partners and capital allies to prove that zero-friction custodianship can cut costs and improve care in under 90 days. If you manage policy, budgets or investment in this space, drop us a line. Let’s build the future Ontario patients deserve.
