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October 1-2, 2026 · Exhibition Place, Toronto · Platinum Sponsor

OMD Educates: The Digital Health Conference 2026

Watch Dr. John O'Mahony's Day 1 Lunch Spotlight talk, Closing the Digital Adoption Gap to Reclaim Capacity.

Dr. John O'Mahony

Family physician in Sarnia, Ontario, in practice since 2010. Lead of the Sarnia Physicians Family Health Organization.

Where primary care is losing capacity

Healthcare has digitized the clinical encounter. Uninsured and third-party work got left behind, and in many practices it still runs on phone calls, faxes and paper.

  1. The work around the task is the workload

    A sick note may be straightforward. A renewal decision may take seconds. But the work surrounding the task can take far more time than the task itself: the request, the handoffs, the communication, payment, delivery, tracking and follow-up.

  2. Find the capacity you already have

    John's office manager said the team was overwhelmed. Before adding more people, he did a full audit of where their time was actually going. Most of the friction fell into three areas: communication and coordination, payment friction and open loops. The aim was to take unnecessary work out of the system and give the time back to the people doing the work.

  3. Remove work, don't move it

    If you save the clinician two minutes and create five minutes of work for the MOA, you have failed. Three people have to say yes: the physician or NP, the office team and the patient. If any one of them finds the new way harder than what they do today, adoption starts to fall apart.

Clinic teams want tools that work in their EMR

Before the conference, we asked clinicians and clinic staff what helps and what gets in the way when their practice takes on a new digital tool. John shared their answers in the talk.

  • 76%

    say working in or alongside their EMR makes them most likely to adopt

  • 79%

    want full-service implementation or hands-on onboarding

  • 50%

    say clearly saving them or their staff time makes them likely to adopt

  • 53%

    adopt and keep using a promising tool only half the time or less

Source: OMD Pre-Conference Survey, 2026 · Conference respondents.

Reclaim capacity in your own practice

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