Key Steps for Accessing Ontario’s Digital Health Services and Clinical Viewers
Access to Ontario Health’s digital health services, including clinical viewers, supports pharmacy professionals in their delivery of safe and effective care. This article shares important reminders from Ontario Health when pharmacy professionals are requesting access to digital health services.
Whether you are applying for digital health services for the first time or updating your organization’s details, ensuring that your Online Request Form (ORF) submission is complete and accurate helps avoid delays and maintains uninterrupted access. It is also critical to understand how changes to your pharmacy’s Accreditation Number—such as through relocation or new ownership—impacts your existing access to digital health services, including clinical viewers.
Clinical Viewers Support Enhanced Patient Care in Community Pharmacies
Clinical viewers help pharmacists make faster, more informed decisions at the point of care and reduce medication-related harms. Clinical viewers can provide pharmacists with:
- Medication histories related to publicly funded medications, publicly funded pharmacy services, and dispensed monitored drugs
- Laboratory test orders and results, including COVID-19 test results
- Diagnostic imaging results
- Discharge summaries and other reports from acute care hospitals across the province
Accessing clinical viewers can help inform clinical decision-making, reduce medication errors, facilitate transitions in care, and support your documentation – all of which improve patient outcomes and safety.
If your pharmacy does not yet have access to a clinical viewer, please visit the ConnectingOntario ClinicalViewer webpage for more information. Scroll to the “Let’s determine the clinical viewer available in your region” section and enter your pharmacy’s postal code to obtain additional instructions for applying for access to the appropriate clinical viewer in your region.
More Information about Clinical Viewers is available on the College’s website.
Gaining Access to Digital Health Services
Ontario Health provides an Online Request Form (ORF) that pharmacies can use to request multiple digital health services, including clinical viewers and Panorama Guided Workflow, dependent on eligibility.
The ORF intake process gathers key information about your pharmacy, including its Health Information Custodian (HIC) status and Legal Entity details, to support the execution of required agreements.
To assist you and streamline your ORF submission, ensure you have the following information ready before you begin:
- Your organization’s full legal name, exactly as it appears with the Ontario College of Pharmacists (e.g., 12345 Ontario Inc.)
- Your pharmacy’s trading name (i.e., the commonly known name) exactly as it appears with the Ontario College of Pharmacists, and the pharmacy’s accreditation number
- Contact and address details for the Legally Responsible Person (LRP) that has the authority to sign agreements on behalf of the pharmacy. This is generally a Director of the corporation (as listed on your OCP accreditation) that owns and operates the pharmacy.
- The LRP can assume the following responsibilities on behalf of the pharmacy and no other contacts need to be identified, or you can specify these contacts individually:
- The Authorized Representative for the pharmacy
- The Privacy contact for the pharmacy
- The IT Security contact for the pharmacy
Has Your Pharmacy’s Accreditation Number Changed? You Will Need to Complete the Intake Process Again
Any change to pharmacy location or ownership impacts existing access to provincial clinical viewers like ConnectingOntario and ClinicalConnect. Ontario Health considers a pharmacy to be a new pharmacy whenever its accreditation number changes and will require the pharmacy to be re-onboarded to clinical viewers.
In these situations, the pharmacy must complete the intake process (Online Request Form) again and Ontario Health will re‑onboard you to their digital services to ensure that agreements, system mapping, security controls, and access continuity are accurate and up to date. It’s important to indicate to Ontario Health, in the appropriate part of the intake form, that a name or ownership change has occurred.
Addressing this as early as possible is important to ensure uninterrupted access to the various digital services. For changes to ConnectingOntario, email [email protected] or call the Ontario Health Service Desk at 1-866-250-1554. For changes to ClinicalConnect, email [email protected] or call 905-577-8270 ext. 1.
