Healthcare

Opportunities

• From referral to a confirmed appointment.
• Keep agreed follow-up from getting lost.
• Prepare the evidence before a consult or multidisciplinary meeting.
• Collect and check compliance evidence.

The healthcare page shows the estate these agents work in.

1. The scenario

A GP faxes a referral to the ENT clinic. A clerk keys it into the patient administration system (PAS). Two items are missing, so the clerk faxes the GP and waits. A consultant triages it a week later. Meanwhile a patient leaves the ward with a blood test due in three weeks. The doctor who ordered it has moved to another team. On Thursday the lung cancer meeting needs results from six screens and a private lab report that has not arrived. And the hospital can be told to expect its accreditation assessors with 24 hours' notice.

Each piece of work crosses many systems and is carried by hand. None of it needs a clinical decision from an agent. All of it needs evidence that holds up later.

2. Agent team design

Four agents, each on fixed steps. Each is a separate agent because each needs different permissions and a different supervisor. Model calls only read documents and draft text. Fixed rules decide order, limits and status.

A2 means delegated tasks: a person or a fixed rule approves each output. L0 means fixed: the agent does not learn from cases. L1 means curated learning: people choose what it learns from and review each change. The scales are on the autonomy contract. All four agents are Tier 3 (strict), because each reaches regulated health data or feeds a formal record.

Start with one agent. Meeting preparation carries the least risk, because the agent only reads and drafts, and a clinician signs.

3. Capabilities used

Six of the seven capabilities do direct work here.

4. Controls

Each control is enforced outside the model, at a named point.

• The PAS account. The referral agent's account can write only referral status, waiting list entries and bookings. It has no permission to create or merge a patient.
• The task server. The follow-up agent's account cannot close a clinical task. Only the responsible team can.
• The EMR access scope. The meeting agent reads only patients on the MDT list. It has no emergency override access.
• Read-only accounts. The accreditation agent reads the learning, maintenance and incident systems and SharePoint. It cannot write to them.
• The register and the agency portal. Only a named person can attest or submit. This is the formal regulatory records zone on the deterministic zones page.
• Fixed rules. Completeness checks, booking order, contact limits, escalation times and evidence status are rules approved by a named owner.
• Templates. Outgoing messages use approved templates only. Each of the first three agents holds all three parts of the Rule of Two, so none rises above A2.
• Healthcare identifiers. IHI lookups use the organisation's NASH certificate and are logged per call. Check the HI Service rules before a vendor hosts the agent.
• My Health Record. Documents are used only where the service's access policy and the patient's controls allow.
• No clinical suggestion without a TGA check. No agent sets urgency, reads a result, or recommends treatment. A suggestion model needs its own validation and a TGA check first.

5. Economics

The unit for control is cost per run. It counts model calls, tool calls and platform time for one referral, task, brief or pack.

The unit for the decision is cost per resolved outcome, as set out on value and investment. Add all model, tool and platform cost, failed and retried runs included. Add the review time of clerks, coordinators, clinicians and the quality manager at a loaded rate. Add the cost of fixing wrong outcomes. Divide by the outcomes accepted as resolved.

A resolved outcome is different for each agent.

• Referral intake: a referral that reaches a confirmed booking or a clear decline, with no wrong patient match.
• Follow-up tracking: an agreed action closed with evidence by the right person.
• Meeting preparation: a brief signed with no missing or stale item on the day.
• Accreditation evidence: a requirement with a current, checked and attested pack.

The value shows up as clerk and coordinator hours and fewer bounced referrals. It also shows up as fewer deferred cases and a register that is always current. Do not count booking speed as clinical benefit. Keep any harm visible on its own, not inside an average.

6. Honest limits

What has no published precedent in Australia or New Zealand.

• No public health service was found running its own agent runtime, agent registry or identity per agent.
• No agent was found checking that agreed follow-up was completed.
• No agent was found collecting NSQHS or Nga Paerewa evidence.
• No agent was found preparing MDT briefs. The nearest case is Oxford's TrustedMDT pilot in England.
• No agent was found running referral intake end to end. Robotic process automation bots and triage suggestion models exist, and the models are at validation stage.

What is not confirmed. Epic's agents are not confirmed in Australia. Microsoft Dragon Copilot is not offered in Australia or New Zealand. Oracle's clinical agent has no Australian listing. Heidi II is rolling out in primary care first, with no public hospital site found. All were checked on 15 October 2026.

What this design refuses to claim. It does not claim clinical benefit from faster booking. It does not let an agent set urgency, read a result, close a clinical task, or recommend treatment.

What was not verified. The current NSQHS version, its number of actions and the period to fix a Not Met action. Step times and volumes are typical, unsourced, except the named Queensland and Logan figures.

7. Metrics

What proves it is working.

• Time from referral receipt to ready for triage falls.
• Fewer referrals bounce back for missing items.
• More agreed actions close with evidence, and overdue ones are found sooner.
• Fewer MDT cases are deferred for missing information.
• The short notice evidence index is ready within hours.

What proves it is not.

• Any wrong patient match.
• Any clinical task closed by an agent.
• Clerk overrides rising over time.
• Patient contacts beyond the agreed limits.
• Stale or unsourced facts found in a signed brief.
• Reviewers often disagreeing with the agent's evidence status.

The estate

A public hospital network, by layer. Vendors in brackets are examples, not a market share claim.

External reading

• Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care, AI Clinical Use Guide, August 2025.
• Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care, short notice assessments, from 1 July 2023.
• Australian Digital Health Agency, My Health Record sharing by default, in force 1 July 2026.
• Australian Digital Health Agency, National Healthcare Interoperability Plan 2023-2028, published 11 July 2023.
• HL7 Australia, AU Core, accessed 15 October 2026.
• Health New Zealand, NHI FHIR API, accessed 15 October 2026.
• HL7, FHIR R4 Task, reviewed 15 October 2026.
• University of Oxford, TrustedMDT pilot, 16 December 2025.
• The Medical Republic, Heidi II agents, 30 September 2026.
• PMC10642163, AI in referral triage on Clinical Prioritisation Criteria, 2023.
• AMA Queensland, Queensland's hidden waiting list, August 2026.