Every mine runs a clinic. They usually don’t look like a workplace health function anywhere else.

Wesdome Gold Mines produces gold in Canada. At Eagle River, its operation in Ontario, workers live on site, a resident population in camps that sleep 369, served by one clinic.

In Ontario, the Ministry of Labour sets out who is examined, how often, by whom, and against which thresholds, down to the form the result is recorded on. The clinic is also the main health system: definitive care is often hours away, and moving someone becomes a medical evacuation with the expense that carries.

“Working in a remote mine clinic is different. We have to be prepared for anything, often without immediate access to a hospital.”

Rob Gow, Reg. N., Occupational Health, Wesdome

Mining is far safer than it was a generation ago, but it remains one of the more physically demanding industries to work in. Some of the remaining hazards are cumulative: silica, diesel particulate underground, lead and mercury in refining, blasting fumes, noise, vibration from drills, heat and fatigue, along with mental health.

Wherever a mine operates, it has to show three things about its people: that anyone in a safety-critical role holds a current fit for duty verdict, that anyone exposed to a listed substance is on a surveillance schedule, and that it can rescue its own. The specifics here are Ontario’s, but they match the regulations most mines work under.

A policy that moved first

In 2024, Wesdome overhauled its Fit for Duty Program and rewrote the policy, extending it to cover whether workers are physically and mentally capable of doing their work safely. In an industry where the medical requirements keep moving, a health program has to adapt quickly, and Wesdome chose not to wait.

The policy was ahead of the system underneath it. Fit for duty verdicts, exposure schedules and the reporting that went up to corporate leadership sat across tools built for other purposes, so the program had to be assembled each time.

Wesdome came to MyC with three requirements:

  • Everything to do with fit for duty in one tool. Assessments, verdicts, certificates, and the exposure schedule behind them.
  • Checkups that match the work, on top of the standard set every workforce needs.
  • Software the clinical team can work in from the first shift, because training is remote and the team rotates.

Fit for duty in one place

A fitness examination produces a verdict: fit, fit with restrictions, or unfit. That verdict reaches HR and site management as a status carrying no clinical detail, and the certificate is the document the worker receives. The entire workflow now lives in the same record as the consultations behind it: sick leave, case management and reassessments, exposure and incident logging with the reminders they trigger.

Reporting comes out of the same place. Statuses aggregate by period, anonymized, so the health picture of the site is available at any time rather than built when someone asks for it. Role-based access is what makes it safe: the medical team works in the medical record, while HR, HSE and leadership see only the anonymized aggregates the record feeds. Wesdome can follow health at site and group level, and shape its health policy from its own data.

“Before MyC, information was scattered across several different areas, which meant more time searching for and finding what we needed. MyC brought that information together in one operating system and streamlined it around what we actually need. It means less time searching and more time looking after our employees.”

Rob Gow, Reg. N., Occupational Health, Wesdome

Saving time with pre-built evaluation templates

Checkups in mining are heavily regulated and heavily scheduled, which means the same examinations come round again and again. That repetition is the opportunity: build the template once and every one of those examinations after it costs less time. That is what MyC did with Wesdome.

Take a hoist evaluation. It used to go through six or seven steps, across more than five spreadsheets and paper. Now it is one. A hoist operator carries people underground, and Ontario requires a physician to examine them once a year on a template certificate issued by the province. The nurse opens it in MyC and the checkup already includes all requested questions, ending in the document the province expects. The same holds for mine rescue and emergency response team checkups, and for alcohol and drug testing under Wesdome’s own Fit for Duty policy.

The pharmacy runs on the same principle against a different problem. Stock moves as medication is dispensed, so the register is never separately maintained, and alerts come before something expires or runs out. On a site where the next delivery is not same-day, knowing that early is what keeps the shelf usable.

MyC usability: only 30 minutes of training before the first shift

Eagle River is covered by two nurses at a time, four medical professionals working back to back on equal-time rotation, plus one non-medical position. Training happens remotely, before anyone reaches the site, and usually takes 30 to 60 minutes. MyC is built by doctors for the doctors and nurses who operate it, and these templates were specifically built to match how Wesdome already worked, which makes the training more efficient.

Convenience here is not a comfort, it is time returned to the clinic: a handover that is read rather than delivered, and a worker seen in one rotation who arrives at the next with their history already in front of whoever is on.

“When system issues or questions come up, the MyC team is there to help. It reduces the headaches and stress I’ve experienced with some of the larger platforms.”

Rob Gow, Reg. N., Occupational Health, Wesdome

More time to focus on mental health

Wesdome’s Fit for Duty policy addresses mental capability as explicitly as it does physical, and mental health emerged as a leading theme in the company’s own employee engagement surveys. Camp rotation work is a recognized risk factor for psychological strain: long shifts, weeks away from home, an isolated site.

The hours this frees up are hours the medical team can spend on employees’ own mental health rather than paperwork. At the other end, HR and HSE can see where the concerns sit, because the numbers are finally visible: a cluster of absences on one crew flags an issue early, and prevention campaigns can be aimed where they will matter.