Accelerating Evidence2Practice: AI-powered clinical decision support to enable primary care transformation in Ontario

Onil Bhattacharyya, MD

Dr. Onil Bhattacharyya is the Frigon Blau Chair in Family Medicine Research at Women’s College Hospital, and director of the Institute for Health Systems Solutions and Virtual Care. He is the lead for the Centre for Digital Health Evaluation and the co-chair of the Canadian Primary Care Research Network. He practices family medicine and is an Associate Professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine and the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the University of Toronto.

Rebecca Ataman, PhD

Rebecca Ataman is Lead, Digital Strategy and Product Implementation at Ontario Health, where she supports the design, implementation, and scale of digital health initiatives that translate evidence into practice. Her work focuses on clinical decision support, quality standards implementation, AI-enabled tools, and the governance structures needed to support safe, evidence-based digital health adoption. Rebecca has played a leading role in Ontario Health’s Evidence2Practice work related to AI-enabled clinical decision support, including the development and testing of the Knowledge Base Standard. In this role, she works across clinical, policy, evidence, vendor, and implementation partners to define requirements for evidence prioritization, provenance, contextualization, and transparency in decision support tools. Rebecca brings experience in digital product implementation, stakeholder engagement, evidence-informed policy, and health system transformation, with a focus on ensuring that clinicians and patients can benefit from trustworthy, contextually relevant tools embedded at the point of care.

Ariane Siegel

Ariane joined OntarioMD as General Counsel and Chief Privacy Officer in 2016. She has been recognized internationally for her achievements in privacy and security. She was recently awarded the 2023 Women in IT Award for Canada’s Security Leader of the Year. She has also been recognized by Who’s Who as a global leader in technology law, privacy and data protection. Ariane provides OntarioMD with strategic and legal advice. Her current focus is on technology and legal issues with respect to use of Artificial Intelligence in Primary Care. Through her leadership, OntarioMD provides health system partners with a practical perspective on privacy and security from the lens of community-based physician practices. Ariane developed OntarioMD’s Privacy & Security Training Module for the Ontario health-care sector and a second Module focused on virtual care.

Prior to joining OntarioMD, Ariane supported global corporations with technology law advice as a Partner in Canada’s largest law firm and from her own practice. She worked as a Senior Investigator for the federal Privacy Commissioner, Law Clerk to the Chief Justice of the Ontario Court of Justice and as Constitutional Counsel to the Attorney General of Ontario. Ariane was part of the launch team for Richard Branson’s Virgin Mobile Canada.

Pippy Scott-Meuser

Pippy Scott-Meuser is the Director of Digital at the Centre for Effective Practice (CEP), where she leads initiatives that bridge the gap between evidence and practice through the strategic use of technology. Since joining CEP in 2017, she has provided leadership for CEP’s digital portfolio, including oversight of the Evidence2Practice (E2P) Ontario Program. Pippy works closely with health system partners across all stages of digital health solution development, from research and scoping to implementation and evaluation, helping translate complex clinical and system requirements into pragmatic, scalable solutions. Her deep understanding of the intersection between strategy andimplementation has positioned CEP as a trusted partner in advancing digital health innovation in Canada.

Ali N. Damji, BHSc, MD, MSc

Dr. Ali Damji is a family physician at the Credit Valley Family Health Team, addiction medicine specialist, health system leader, and Assistant Professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of Toronto. He serves as a Clinical Lead, Digital Implementation of Quality Initiatives at Ontario Health, where his work focuses on the evaluation and implementation of digital health innovations, including artificial intelligence and clinical decision support in primary care. His broader work spans quality improvement, health system transformation, medical education, global health, and health policy, with leadership roles across academic, healthcare, national and international organizations. He is particularly interested in how emerging technologies can be responsibly translated into clinical practice to improve care, strengthen primary care systems, and support clinicians and patients.