Ontario’s healthcare executives are under intense pressure to balance soaring demand, tight budgets, and ever-rising expectations for digitally-enabled healthcare services. Yet within this challenging landscape lies a tremendous opportunity: through smarter use of data and technology, healthcare organizations can optimize existing resources, improve patient experiences and outcomes, and build more resilient, equitable systems.

The Current Healthcare Landscape and Imperative for Digital Transformation

Ontario’s healthcare system is entering a period of significant growth, with demand expected to increase substantially over the next decade. This is driven by an aging population with more complex needs, a rising number of retirees and ongoing immigration to cities and surrounding communities – made more complex by changes in how and where people want and need to access care. In response, the provincial government has committed over $50 billion toward infrastructure improvements over ten years, while operational budgets may not keep pace. With system-wide shortfalls projected to reach $21 billion by 2028, this is also a moment of opportunity. Across the province, healthcare professionals continue to bring energy, commitment, and innovation to meet growing needs and shape the future of care.

While operational budgets remain tight, we are anticipating a mismatch between what’s being built and what can be sustainably staffed or managed. Northern and rural facilities are particularly strained by workforce shortages, limited connectivity, and higher per-patient delivery costs, impacting access to care. As well, many of today’s patients expect consumer-grade digital services including instant access to their medical records, virtual care options, and frictionless coordination across providers, while still maintaining the human elements of care.

Against this backdrop of constrained budgets and rising expectations, Optimus has identified opportunities for healthcare leaders to capture immediate value from their existing data and technology that intend to both optimize operations and insights as well as enhance patient and workforce experiences and population health outcomes.

Three Innovative Opportunities to Leverage Existing Data and Technology

1. Turning Data into Actionable Insights

Despite widespread implementation of new or upgraded health information systems, many organizations are still in the early stages of harnessing their full data potential. Through these systems and others, many organizations collect massive volumes of clinical and operational data, yet these datasets are often siloed or under-utilized. By building robust analytics capabilities, hospitals can:

• Define and track performance metrics: Establishing clear and accurate KPIs that provide insights into flow, health outcomes, financial health, and workforce stability, allows leadership to pinpoint inefficiencies and measure improvement over time.
• Visualize trends in service demand: Advanced dashboards can reveal trends, predict surges, identify bottlenecks in patient and operational flows, and help forecast future resource needs more accurately.
• Integrate clinical data for smarter decisions: Integrating clinical data to support better-informed care decisions empowers providers to tailor treatments and intervene proactively.

2. Maximizing the Value of Existing Tech Stack

Hospitals in Ontario have made major investments in EMRs, patient portals, and workflow tools, but many are still struggling to get full value from them. Adoption often lags due to redundant systems, siloed applications, and low clinician engagement tied to poor configuration or limited training. As the province moves toward more integrated care and regional planning, the stakes are higher. Organizations are no longer planning in isolation. Decisions around optimization now require coordination with partners, shared infrastructure, and long-term system thinking.:

• Consolidate and integrate platforms: Merging overlapping systems/applications or enabling secure data exchange between modules reduces downtime and simplifies user experience.
• Enhance configurations and automations: Tailoring system settings, automating routine tasks (e.g., order entry, discharge summaries), and enabling alerts can free up staff time and reduce errors.
• Boost adoption through targeted training and change management: Engaging clinical champions, developing role-based training pathways, and monitoring usage metrics helps drive sustained use of key features.
• Strengthen alignment with Ontario Health Teams and community partners: Build shared digital strategies across hospitals, primary care, and community health organizations to improve continuity of care and support region-wide integration.

3. Deploying AI to Boost Efficiency & Outcomes

The market for AI tools that are compliant with Personal Health Information Protection Act (PHIPPA) has matured, offering cost-effective solutions for both clinical and administrative domains that are game-changing. Key use cases include:

• Clinical documentation automation: Speech-to-text and natural language processing tools can draft high quality progress notes, discharge summaries, and referral letters, saving physician time and improving billing accuracy.
• Patient Engagement: Leveraging conversational AI (voice, chat, and email) to transform patient communication – enabling intelligent triage, proactive follow-ups, and a more seamless, personalized patient experience.
• Patient and staff scheduling optimization: AI-driven scheduling systems balance patient demand, staff availability, and regulatory requirements to minimize overtime and ensure adequate coverage.
• Diagnostic decision support: Machine-learning models can flag high-risk patients, identifying potential adverse events, and supporting radiology or pathology workflows.
• Streamlined back-office operations: Automated billing, claims adjudication, and inventory management reduce administrative overhead and accelerate revenue cycles.

A Final Thought: Building a Data-Driven, Technology-Empowered Future

The road ahead depends not on how much more is spent, but on how boldly and thoughtfully hospitals and integrated healthcare teams reimagine the use of what’s already in their hands. Organizations that embrace data and technology thoughtfully will be best positioned to deliver sustainable, high-quality, patient-centered care, today and into the future. It’s clear that Ontario’s healthcare organizations must do more than deploy new tools—they must weave data and digital workflows into the very fabric of care delivery. By focusing on these three opportunities healthcare organizations can:

1. Unlock the power of data you already collect but rarely use – gain insights that enable smarter resource allocation and more personalized care.
2. Extract maximum value from existing investments through targeted optimization and integration.
3. Harness AI responsibly to streamline operations and elevate clinical excellence.

How Optimus SBR Can Help You Leverage Data & AI for Immediate Impact

Whether you lead a hospital, community based-organization, a primary care team or an Ontario Health Team, the path to smarter, more sustainable care runs through your existing data and technology. Our Technology and Data Services team works seamlessly with our specialized Healthcare Practice to partner with healthcare executives to design and implement tailored, cost-effective solutions across three core service domains: Technology Services, Cybersecurity Services, and Data Services. This includes:

• Defining multi-year IT strategies and costed implementation roadmaps aligned to your clinical and operational priorities.
• Supporting the transformation of technology delivery models and selection of the right digital solutions, from requirements gathering and market scan to RFP and implementation.
• Conducting cyber security and data maturity assessments and helping to design pragmatic governance and implementation plans that enhance risk posture and data utility.
• Advising on enterprise data strategies that position your data as a strategic asset and drive measurable impact across the care continuum.

Real-World Solutions

The following are examples of real-world solutions that we have provided for clients.

Rapid Identification of Under-Leveraged Systems and Data Assets

A Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) roadmap was developed for a large healthcare client to assess their current maturity, identify gaps, and lay out a target data architecture. A follow-up Critical Data Element framework defined and prioritized the most valuable data assets, ensuring information was stored, validated, and governed for impact. This enabled the identification of inefficiencies in care pathways, the visualization of service demand patterns, and the use of clinical and operational data to support evidence-based, personalized care decisions.

Pragmatic Analytics Design and Integration Roadmap

An engagement for a multi-site provider delivered an IT modernization roadmap that consolidated EMR instances, upgraded hardware, and introduced secure patient portals. By embracing a cloud-first infrastructure and outsourced cybersecurity operations, the client achieved tangible savings, higher system uptime, and improved staff satisfaction, all within existing budget constraints.

Compliant, Cost-Efficient AI Solution

A recent clinical partner engagement conducted a market scan of off-the-shelf AI solutions, evaluated them for ease of integration, maturity, and compliance, and produced a prioritized set of use cases complete with privacy and cyber security assessments.

Optimus SBR’s Healthcare Practice

Optimus SBR is an execution-focused firm that specializes in turning policy into action. Our Healthcare team has significant experience working with major healthcare stakeholders across the country including government ministries and agencies, providers across the full continuum of care, regulators and associations, and many more. We partner to create new models of care, facilitate decision making, assist with strategic implementation and integration efforts, and develop proposals for government approval. With our real world healthcare experience, we help organizations get done what isn’t.

We have a wide range of service offerings and can support your organization in a number of ways, including:

• Model of Care Design and Implementation: Knowledgeable and experienced health care experts who can guide and inform care model development and implementation efforts.
• Strategy and Transformation: Strategic planners and project managers that help your team clearly set a roadmap, milestones, and accountabilities, and can help give the plan the attention it needs through intelligent project and change management.
• Clinical and Operational Improvement Initiatives: Experts in clinical and operational processes and standards who will review programs and recommend actionable, pragmatic solutions that measurably improve performance.
• Engagement and Facilitation: Experienced, neutral, third-party facilitators that can ask the tough and thought-provoking questions as you work through the “thorny issues”.
• Business Case Development: Teams that know how to develop a compelling business case and help you work out the kinks along the way.

If you’re a leader looking to optimize the potential of your data and technology investments, please feel free to connect and learn more about opportunities to partner with us.

Ken Chan, Partner and Health, Government & Public Sector Practice Lead
Ken.Chan@optimussbr.com

Doug Wilson, Senior Vice President and Technology & Data Practice Lead
Doug.Wilson@optimussbr.com

Andrea Spencer, Vice President and Healthcare Practice Lead
Andrea.Spencer@optimussbr.com