DocMapper is an interactive web-based mapping platform to help Ontarians find physiciansâand especially family physiciansâwho speak their language.
By âfamily physicianâ we mean âa physician trained in family medicine, who holds a license to practice independently in Ontario, and who provides comprehensive family medical services to the community.â This excludes specialist physicians like surgeons, gynecologists, cardiologists, etc. It also excludes physicians who may have specialized in family medicine but are not providing comprehensive family medicine services to the community. For example, many family physicians work in administrative roles, in non-public settings like military bases or retirement homes, or have âfocused practices,â specializing for example in sports medicine or psychotherapy.
It is surprisingly hard to tell which physicians in Ontario are practicing family medicine! There is no single âsource of truthâ for this information. To find physicians who are likely practicing comprehensive family medicine, we have to use many clues including practice location, education, and registration history. This is a hard problem to solve and we may not have it quite right yet, so weâre refining our methods and improving our data as we go along. We have published our methods to identify family physicians as well as a user evaluation of DocMapper in academic papers (see below).
Unfortunately, no one knows, because no central body in Ontario keeps track of which family physicians are accepting new patients! Weâre looking into the possibility of including this information in our site in the future if and when it becomes available.
Our data comes from public sources, including the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario and Statistics Canada. We then process the data to figure out which physicians are likely to be family physicians providing comprehensive family medicine services.
The data currently appearing on Docmapper is up to date as of early January 2026. Any changes to physician practice addresses or other characteristics reported after this date are not included. Population data (population densities) are from the 2021 Census. Data will be updated as time permits, and when new data becomes available.
Yes, to access our data please contact Dr. Lise M. Bjerre at lbjerre@uottawa.ca. We are also looking at ways to publish our data to make it easier for researchers and the community to access.
DocMapper was developed at the University of Ottawa and the Institut du Savoir Montfort under the leadership of Dr. Lise M. Bjerre. Dr. Christopher Belanger collected and processed the data, and designed and built the web application. This is the output of a collaborative research process with vital input from Dr. Alain Gauthier, Dr. Patrick Timony, Antoine Desilets, and Dr. Leanda Godfrey.
The creation of this site was initially supported through grant funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the SPOR-Francophone Work Group (OSSU- IF-COFFRE), an INSPIRE-PHC Applied Health Research Question, and the University of Ottawa and Institut du Savoir Montfort Chair in Family Medicine. Dr. Lise M. Bjerre was the principal investigator/recipient on all these grant/funding sources. At present there is no active funding for DocMapper. Maintenance activities are done on a volunteer basis by Dr. Christopher Belanger and Dr. Lise M. Bjerre.
We would love you to help! In a future update, we hope to allow visitors to suggest corrections to our data. In the meantime, please email Dr. Lise M. Bjerre at lbjerre@uottawa.ca with any questions or comments.
Bjerre, L. M., Timony, P., Gauthier, A., Desilets, A., Godfrey, L., Belanger, C. âDocmapper.ca / TrouvezUnMedecin.ca.â Accessed: Fri May 22 2026 17:51:56 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) [Website] Available: https://www.docmapper.ca