Australia
New Zealand
HealthLink has been selected by the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing (DoHDA) to support the broader rollout of the Initial Assessment and Referral Decision Support Tool (IAR-DST) across Australian general practice software.
The IAR-DST is a Commonwealth funded mental health decision support tool designed to assist health professionals to determine the most appropriate level of care a person will need across five levels of care within the Australian stepped care model.
DoHDA’s Request for Proposal focused on improving the tool’s usability, increasing access and uptake in primary care, ensuring standards-based interoperability, and enabling consistent data collection – while maintaining clinical autonomy and patient privacy.
Meeting the Department’s Requirements
HealthLink’s submission to DoHDA’s Request for Proposal centred on embedding the IAR-DST into real-world GP workflows, rather than introducing another standalone system. Key requirements addressed included:
- Seamless integration into GP clinical software, reducing disruption to existing workflows
- Improved referral quality and consistency, using the eight-domain IAR framework to better communicate patient needs
- Leveraging HealthLink’s existing national GP footprint and long-standing role in delivering secure messaging and digital referral services.
A Consistent User Experience for Australian GPs
A key differentiator in HealthLink’s proposal is in its ability to provide a consistent IAR-DST user experience across multiple Practice Management Systems (PMSs), rather than requiring bespoke implementations through each PMS vendor.
Through its SmartForms platform, HealthLink already integrates with the vast majority of PMSs used in Australia, allowing clinicians to access and complete referrals and assessments in a familiar and consistent way—regardless of the PMS they use. This approach directly addresses long-standing fragmentation issues that have limited uptake of national tools in primary care.
HealthLink’s existing experience in delivering IAR-DST implementation projects across 18 Primary Health Networks in 7 States and territories, demonstrated improved referral quality and higher-than-expected usage when integrating the tool directly into GP referral workflows.
Two-Phase Delivery Model
The approved approach will be delivered in two phases:
Phase One focuses on increasing discoverability and adoption by making the IAR-DST available through the HealthLink SmartForms homepage, alongside existing mental health referral pathways. This phase also establishes non-identifiable analytics to support national reporting and evaluation.
Phase Two will introduce an in-context SMART on FHIR application, initially launching within Best Practice’s PMS, allowing clinicians to complete the IAR-DST directly within the patient record. Outcomes can be written back into the PMS and used to trigger appropriate referral workflows, such as Medicare Mental Health referral services.
By using SMART on FHIR, the solution is designed to be extensible to other FHIR-enabled systems over time, reducing the need for custom integrations and supporting future national digital health initiatives.
Supporting National Mental Health Reform
DoHDA identified the IAR-DST as a cornerstone of its broader mental health reform agenda, supporting timely access to appropriate care, reducing under- and over-servicing, and improving consistency of assessment across the health system.
“HealthLink’s proposal aligns closely with the Department’s objectives, leveraging standards-based technology, existing GP software partnerships, and proven eReferral infrastructure to support national scale—without adding complexity for clinicians” – says Jean-Christophe Meunier, National Manager at HealthLink.
“The opportunity to deliver these national digital programs, tools and services across the Australian health sector demonstrates the true value of HealthLink’s decades long investment in its platform capabilities and infrastructure. HealthLink handles the complexity of system-to-system interactions on behalf of practices, delivering trust, reliability and continued success as clinical systems evolve.” – says Sahif Ali, Product Director at HealthLink.
Implementation delivery is progressing in partnership with DoHDA, and other stakeholders across the primary care ecosystem, ready for access by mid-2026.
About HealthLink SmartForms
HealthLink’s SmartForm Technology is nationwide service helping facilitate the secure and synchronous transfer of patient referrals. Doctors using Best Practice Premier, Medical Director Clinical, Medical Director Helix, Genie Solutions, Medtech Artia, Medtech Evolution, Shexie, Zedmed, Communicare softwares can get access to the integrated SmartForms service.
