562 - The Future of Referral Management: Co-design, AI, and Statewide Collaboration

In this episode of Talking HealthTech, Peter Birch speaks with Dr Simon Kos, Chief Clinical Officer for ANZ at Microsoft; Georgia James, Director for VicKey Statewide CRM at Austin Health; and Alan Pritchard, Director of EMR and ICT Services at Austin Health.

The conversation covers the development and rollout of a statewide Microsoft Dynamics-based CRM for health services in Victoria, with a focus on digital referral management, patient communication, automation, and the use of AI in improving health system processes and outcomes.

Key Takeaways

🏥 The Victorian Statewide CRM project, based on Microsoft Dynamics, began as a solution to surgical audit and patient communication challenges at Austin Health. It has since expanded, now supporting referral management and inter-hospital transfer processes across metropolitan and regional health services in Victoria.

📋 Managing healthcare referrals is typically a complex, paper-driven and inefficient process. The new digital referral management system standardises and digitises this workflow, improving efficiency, reducing environmental impact, and ensuring timely patient care.

🤝 The importance of co-design and collaboration between health services, IT teams, and clinicians was highlighted. Rollouts involved extensive workshops and change management, with an emphasis on capturing the "80%" common process across services while allowing flexibility for local variation.

🤖 AI is being explored to support and augment referral processes, such as classifying incoming documents, summarising referral content, and identifying hidden health issues within referrals. The approach ensures clinical oversight and gradual adoption for trust and safety.

🔗 The system is designed to promote federated innovation—allowing a collaborative framework where new features can be rolled out at scale and shared across services, rather than every service building in isolation.

📊 Leveraging enterprise data and digitising previously manual or paper-based MVPs (like post-it note reminders or spreadsheets) enables ongoing process improvement and scalable healthcare innovation.

⚖️ Equity considerations were also discussed: digital solutions need to be accessible, especially for vulnerable populations, to avoid widening the digital divide in healthcare.

Check out the episode and full show notes on the Talking HealthTech website.

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