Ontario Workers Network (OWN): Scaling Provincial Standards for Work-Injury Triage
Redesigning central intake and triage logic for Ontario’s work-related musculoskeletal network to accelerate specialized care and return-to-work timelines.
Project results.
Centralized Logic
Unified intake logic deployed across all network sites to eliminate referral fragments
Real-Time Triage
Automated screening for complex injuries to ensure immediate routing to specialists.
Project overview.
[Outcome]: Standardized clinical pathways for province-wide musculoskeletal injury management.
[Innovation]: Development of a centralized intake system using specific clinical logic to automate specialty routing.
[Scale]: Supporting a network of clinics across Ontario to deliver specialized care for work-related injuries.
The primary challenge in managing work-related musculoskeletal injuries across a province as large as Ontario is the "Systemic Friction" caused by fragmented intake. Before the intervention of the Ontario Workers Network (OWN), injured workers faced significant delays due to inconsistent triage logic and a lack of specialized oversight at the point of entry. Traditional models failed to distinguish between simple recoveries and complex cases requiring surgical consultation, leading to bottlenecks that kept people out of the workforce longer than necessary.
Project execution.
As the Chief Technical Officer of Arthur Health, I led the architectural design of the OWN platform to bridge the gap between clinical intent and institutional execution. We replaced subjective intake forms with a rigorous digital framework that applies "Surgery to System Architecture." By embedding surgical-grade triage logic directly into the software, we ensured that every patient entering the network is automatically screened for "red flags" and routed to the appropriate level of care—whether that be community-based physiotherapy or a specialist surgical consult. This system creates a "Persistent State" of patient data, ensuring that no worker falls through the cracks during the transition from initial injury to final restoration.
Project results.
The implementation of the OWN platform has successfully removed the friction of manual referrals. By standardizing the clinical language used across the network, we have achieved a scalable model of care that delivers predictable outcomes for both patients and payers. The system currently enables a coordinated response across multiple Ontario sites, significantly reducing the time-to-diagnosis for thousands of workers and ensuring that the right clinical logic is applied to every case, every time.
