Ask any Canadian hospital CIO about IT salespeople and they’re likely to echo some of my own experiences. Reps often show up promising to fix all our problems. A vendor arrives with one shiny product and treats it as the answer to every question. Since they’re selling a hammer, they view everything in the hospital as a nail. But my real need might be to hang drywall, and a shiny hammer swung at drywall just makes a mess.
When you have decades of experience, you know how to steer clear of overblown promises. But the impact on junior IT leaders can be significant. Told they need a hammer, they buy it, fight with it for months, and then write off the whole company. A bad first tool poisons the well for everyone who comes after.
In the first post in this series, Marie Meagher noted that I’d been clear with the OnX team about what not to do. That’s exactly what I meant.
There’s another pattern I’ve observed among healthcare IT vendors. Quarterly quotas are at odds with healthcare. Our pace is more like a glacier than a flash flood, and it’s not unusual for us to change direction several times before landing on a decision.
With some large vendors, I have gotten a new sales rep every quarter because the last one couldn’t hit a number. There was no one to carry my problems from one conversation to the next. Instead, there was a revolving door telling me what to put on a PO so someone could reach their target.
That isn’t a partnership.
I prefer to engage with IT providers who start by asking what my organization’s challenges are. They are not selling to me; they are listening to me. Only then can they reach into a toolbelt and help me work out which tool is best suited to the job.
OnX fits that bill. Since 1983, they have staked the business on accountable, long-term partnerships, and they’re bringing that ethos to healthcare.
It’s the same empathetic way they grew their public safety business. Over the past decade, OnX has built a serious presence with police services across Ontario by investing in relationships first. They supported major police-sector events, extending invitations not just to current clients but also to those clients’ peers in other jurisdictions. And they continue to invest in community relations that support law enforcement’s core mission.
Though born as a data centre company, OnX has continued to add tools rather than betting the business on one. Today, OnX supports some policing clients across all the company’s practice areas, including data centre, cloud, AI and data, cybersecurity, and networking. A company that sells one thing can’t do that, no matter how neutral it claims to be. Neutrality is more than a values statement; it starts with what you have to sell. Breadth alone doesn’t guarantee it, but without breadth it isn’t available to you at all. OnX sources across hundreds of OEM relationships.
Range matters, too. OnX delivers services to public safety organizations with thousands of sworn and civilian staff, as well as to municipalities with much smaller footprints. They understand that law enforcement agencies don’t want to be handed something built for the service next door. Neither do hospital CIOs.
I still work across both sides of the healthcare IT world. My hospital clients value me because I understand the vendor landscape. My industry clients value me because I have a clear line of sight into how hospitals, operations, and government work. I don’t lend that perspective casually. I’m lending it to OnX because they’re approaching healthcare the way I always wished vendors would: with questions, a set of tools, and the patience to stay.
That is the kind of IT vendor that merits a closer look and most often deserves a yes.
You may have seen OnX on stage at Public Sector Network Digital Leadership Day in Toronto in April. If you’re attending the Canada East Healthcare Innovation Summit 2026 in Montreal, hosted by Bamberg Health on November 24, you’ll have another opportunity to connect with OnX. In the meantime, stay tuned for the next blog, which will be authored by one of OnX’s data experts, and get in touch if you would like to talk sooner.