The industry problem / opportunity
Before the COVID pandemic, public outpatient appointments in Victoria were rarely delivered virtually. In the past five years, demand for telehealth services has grown, with Healthdirect Australia (HDA)’s VideoCall platform facilitating close to 800,000 video calls for Victorian Department of Health (DoH) organisations in the past financial year.
With video telehealth increasingly preferred to receive outpatient services, both HDA and Victorian DoH wanted to provide enhanced video telehealth services for health service providers organisations in various medical specialties, so health service providers and patients could benefit from time and system savings in the delivery of quality care. This would support better efficiency in the overall health system, as well as help improve user experience and patient personal health education towards better health outcomes.
The solution and outcomes
Brought together by DHCRC, this project was led by Monash University’s Faculty of Information Technology researchers (project leadership and technical implementation) in collaboration with Monash Health (clinical evaluation), Healthdirect Australia (telehealth industry partner), the University of Melbourne (co-design and simulated evaluation), and the Victoria Department of Health (government advisory).
This collaborative project focused on augmenting existing web-based video telehealth services to improve patient, clinician and caregiver experiences, initially, in the palliative care sector in Victoria. The project team also worked to lay the foundation for enhanced telehealth services to be seamlessly adopted and scaled, first to Victorian clinics across all sectors then beyond.
The Patient Consultation Summary (PCS) application was developed as an add-on to HDA’s Video Call platform. The PCS app enables health practitioners to create a structured text-based note, in the form of a consultation summary, in real time during a telehealth consultation session. This care summary can be shared and discussed with the patient/carer on screen during the consultation, with in-built medical terminology explanations sourced from Australian Health Thesaurus managed by HDA (with ability for clinicians to add new terms and explanations) to help patients’ understanding. The password-protected consult summary PDF can also be emailed to the patient for their reference, and saved for record-keeping before the end of the call.
As part of the multi-faceted co-design and evaluation of the PCS app, the team from The Digital Health Validitron (Centre for Digital Transformation of Health, The University of Melbourne) conducted a clinical simulation study for early identification and rectification of usability and acceptability issues prior to real-world clinical evaluation at Monash Health, to de-risk the implementation of the PCS solution.
Through rounds of experience-based co-design, prototyping, and evaluations in simulated and real-world settings, using an agile research and development approach, the project team ensured the solution directly addresses the needs of patients, carers and clinicians.
The impact
The software prototype was implemented and piloted during telehealth consultation sessions held on the HDA Video Call platform in outpatient medical clinics at Monash Health in the first half of 2025. The PCS tool was used over 70 times by clinic staff, demonstrating its real-world utility, with users providing feedback to help refine features in the prototype towards a scalable product.
Victorian public health services were then invited to participate in a restricted implementation and evaluation trial that would provide DoH Victoria with critical information to inform ongoing utilisation. Health services from both metro and regional areas in Victoria responded to the call out to explore the use of the PCS application in their services.
As testament to the strength of this collaboration and the outcomes produced, the project team has won Monash University Faculty of Information Technology’s 2025 Dean’s Research Team of the Year, awarded for exemplifying exceptional collaboration across the University and wider research, industry, government, and end-user communities.
The insight
Sam Georgy, Service Director, Video Call, Healthdirect Australia said, “We are very excited to see this impactful translation of research into real-world healthcare service application supporting stronger virtual care adoption and innovation across diverse clinical settings. This unique project demonstrates the power of robust collaboration between research, clinical and industry partners, where the whole has been greater than the sum of its parts – as was proven by the final outcome of this research initiative.”
What’s next
Healthdirect Australia and DoH Victoria are working towards a national roll out of the PCS application to bring enhanced telehealth capabilities across Australia. Healthdirect Video Call is used by hospitals, community health centres, general practices and virtual emergencies across most Australian states and territories, supporting 120,100 health service providers across 12,700 health organisational clinics in over 90 specialties.
