Cedarline Health Canada - healthcare referral platform design for a Toronto-led health tech company

Cedarline Health Canada is a fictional healthcare referral and intake platform built for the Canadian market. It starts from the US edition, as Canadian English does, then changes what matters: Canadian spelling (colour, centre, but -ize), provincial health plans and health card numbers, ADP and private insurers, PIPEDA and PHIPA, and fax and eReferral as the standard referral channels.

Project facts

• Client: Cedarline Health Inc. (fictional)
• Sector: Healthcare technology: referral and patient intake automation
• Markets: Toronto and Vancouver offices, serving clinics, home equipment vendors, hospitals and specialty pharmacies across Canada
• Services: Market localisation · Copywriting · Brand adaptation · Healthcare SaaS website design · Accessibility (WCAG 2.2 AA) · SEO foundations
• Templates: 14 page templates shared with every Cedarline Health edition
• Stack: Next.js (static export), React and Tailwind CSS; one region pack (copy, data, alt text) and one theme per market

The brief

Close to American, but unmistakably Canadian

Canada shares much with the US but runs on provincial health plans, ADP, private extended health and drug plans with special authorization. The edition keeps the US structure and applies Canadian spelling, then replaces the content: OHIP and MSP instead of US insurance, health card numbers instead of member IDs, eReferral and fax instead of fax alone, and PIPEDA and PHIPA instead of HIPAA. The result reads as a Canadian health tech product, not a US site with a maple leaf.

Designing for Canada

What actually changed between the US and this edition

• Story - US edition: US healthcare referral platform · Canada: Canadian referral automation for home equipment, infusion, fertility, specialist clinics, hospitals and specialty pharmacy
• Spelling - US edition: color, center · Canada: colour, centre (with -ize kept)
• Coverage - US edition: US insurance eligibility · Canada: Provincial plans (OHIP, MSP), ADP, private insurers and drug plans with special authorization
• Referral channels - US edition: Fax and electronic referrals · Canada: Faxes, eReferrals and portal uploads, including handwritten forms
• Search - US edition: ZIP code · Canada: Postal code
• Markets - US edition: US states · Canada: Provinces: Ontario, BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Quebec, Nova Scotia
• Legal - US edition: HIPAA, state privacy · Canada: PIPEDA and PHIPA, provincial health privacy laws, OPC complaint route
• Look - US edition: Deep teal, coral, Plus Jakarta Sans · Canada: Spruce green, restrained red, Source Serif 4 + Inter
• Contact - US edition: US phone and address · Canada: Toronto (200 Wellington Street West) and Vancouver (1055 West Hastings Street) offices

Brand adaptation

The same Cedarline Health, with a local accent

Spruce green carries the interface; a single restrained red is used only for italic emphasis and the primary call to action, so the palette reads Canadian through restraint rather than maple leaves. Source Serif 4 and Inter give a crisp, civic, highly legible feel. The Health descriptor stays.

Homepage, product and solutions

A Toronto skyline at dusk opens the site; the search asks for a condition, referral type or coverage question. The hero queue shows a sample eReferral from Sample Orthopaedics being checked against provincial and private coverage and routed to the Vancouver team. The most distinctive flow is the fax intake demo: a sample faxed order is split, read field by field with confidence scores, and checked against ADP and insurer documentation rules before it reaches the order system.

Compliance, accessibility and trust

• Privacy policy under PIPEDA and provincial health privacy laws (PHIPA in Ontario), with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada as the complaint route.
• Meaningful consent for non-essential cookies, with a privacy preferences link in the footer.
• Disclaimer that Cedarline Health is a fictional concept, is not a healthcare provider, and that in an emergency you should call 911 or 811 for health advice.
• Passes automated WCAG 2.2 AA checks on every page at 360, 390, 768 and 1440 px: no contrast failures, no unreachable controls, no horizontal scrolling.
• A language switcher built from hreflang sits in the header on desktop and in the footer on phones.

One system, twelve markets

Every visible string lives in one region pack per market (copy, data and alt text), and every colour and typeface in one theme file. This edition needed no new templates or components: a region pack, a theme, local data and legal content made it a different brand experience. For a health-tech company with international plans, a new market becomes a content project rather than a rebuild.

Deliverables

• Market profile: language, formats, legal and seasonality
• Full localised copy across 14 templates, header, footer and forms
• Brand adaptation: palette, type pairing and logo descriptor
• 14 regional photographs (Pexels, credited in credits.json)
• Local legal content
• Accessibility pass (WCAG 2.2 AA, automated) and QA at four screen widths
• Portfolio media: stills, full-page captures, scroll video, OG image, brand board