A world-class team starts with highly specialized, dedicated and compassionate professionals working in lockstep to achieve Holland Bloorview’s singular vision – the most meaningful and healthy futures for all children, youth and families. It continues with a team who isn’t afraid to dream, innovate and dare – big.
growth in the number of clinicians at Holland Bloorview over the past decade
Holland Bloorview staff bring clinical and research expertise and innovative ideas to transform the clinical experience for the clients and families we serve.
As Canada’s largest pediatric rehabilitation hospital with the only hospital-based research institute focused on childhood disability and developmental differences, innovation isn’t just a nice-to-have, it’s a need-to-have. It’s what ensures that our care and services are agile and transformed by research and education and empowers our team to be, and bring, their best.
In 2024-2025, Holland Bloorview invested $1 million in staff-led initiatives driven by a shared desire to bring cutting-edge technology and research from the lab to clinic faster – and to ensure that clinicians and clients alike have access to the industry-leading equipment they need to support the rehabilitation journey.
One example? In 2024, a clinician-researcher team (pictured above) recognized an opportunity to use 3D technology to create a made-at-Holland Bloorview solution for designing and fabricating prosthetic covers for clients’ prosthetic devices. The pair, who represent both the orthotics and prosthetics department and the Bloorview Research Institute, are using a fully digital workflow including 3D scanning, computer-aided design and in-house 3D printing to develop custom prosthetic covers. This helps avoid lengthy delays and the added costs of outsourcing this important part of a client’s prosthetic device. This project was made possible by the INSPIRE Grant, funded by donors through the Holland Bloorview Foundation.
Learn how a team at Holland Bloorview is tackling long wait times for autism diagnoses across Canada – delays that can cause children to miss key developmental milestones.
Led by Dr. Melanie Penner, developmental pediatrician and senior clinician scientist at the Bloorview Research Institute, ECHO Autism and the ECHO AuDIO research implementation project (funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research) engage nearly 600 community-based clinicians nationwide each year to build stronger connections, improve early diagnosis and support the development of integrated community care and tailored local strategies.
In Canada, there are 850,000 children with disabilities or developmental differences, yet there are only 150 developmental pediatricians, with nearly 25 per cent set to retire over the next five years.
Addressing this acute shortage is a key priority for the Holland Bloorview team, which is home to the largest developmental pediatric training program in Canada. Since 2005, the two-year subspecialty program, offered through the University of Toronto, has trained more than 60 residents and clinical fellows from across Canada and countries around the world with a goal of building, and scaling up a pipeline of highly specialized physicians.
In winter 2024, with support from The Slaight Family Foundation, the training program expanded, doubling its capacity to train developmental pediatricians to support the developmental health and wellbeing of some of the country’s—and the world’s—most medically-and developmentally-complex children and youth.
Adds Dr. Angelina Orsino, program director and developmental pediatrician, “Our holistic, client- and family-centred approach in the program is unique in Canada and beyond. The team’s goal is to train the next generation of developmental pediatricians—both here at home and internationally—to improve the healthy futures of all children with disabilities.”
