Best Practice Software

Bp Allied: Assisting Practices With Navigating COVID-19

Globally, we are all facing unprecedented times in an ever-evolving situation due to COVID-19.  Our healthcare system will be placed under immense pressure over the course of this time and many of your clients will be seeking ongoing support from your practice due to new and pre-existing conditions or mental health issues arising from the anxiety surrounding COVID-19.

Here at Best Practice, all our staff are now working from home to ensure our business can continue to support you during this busy period.  You may also be considering moving your staff to a work from home situation or a change in normal working structure to deal with this extraordinary time.  These changes will bring challenges.

However, Bp Allied is able to assist you to alleviate the stress in this transition. We’ve gathered a few hints and tips to help you navigate your practice through these difficult times.

Transitioning to a Hosted Environment

Bp Allied Fully Hosted is the perfect solution for any practice wishing to work in different locations while maintaining a single database and an overview of the entire practice.   For our customers currently hosting BP Allied internally, you may wish to consider transitioning to our fully hosted service to give you more flexibility in work locations. 

Bp Allied Fully Hosted Subscription benefits:

  • Allows staff to access Bp Allied from their home computers or other remote location;*
  • Suitable for Windows and Mac;
  • Backups every 30 minutes;
  • Secure Australian Servers; and
  • Support and Upgrades readily available.

* A suitable internet connection is required.

If you’d like to discuss moving to a Fully Hosted environment please call our Sales Team on 1300 40 1111, Option 3, then Option 2.

 Telehealth Appointments

Telehealth will be a crucial tool in maintaining client appointments for those that are isolated.  Click here to download a short PDF on how to use Zoom with Bp Allied.

For our customers taking advantage of Physitrack, a reminder that Physitrack has an inbuilt Telehealth service.  Telehealth video calls are completely free with Physitrack until 13th April 2020, so now is a great time to sign up.

Bp Allied users get access to Physitrack at a greatly reduced price of only $8.99 p/m (regular subscriptions are $13.99 p/m). If you’d like to know more about Physitrack visit www.physitrack.com

 Online Appointment Bookings

Taking advantage of our HealthSite Integration to allow clients to book their own appointments will significantly reduce administration time for your practice.  Healthsite seamlessly connects to Bp Allied to allow your clients to book a real-time appointment with your practice 24 hours a day. 

Healthsite are generously giving our Bp Allied customers three months free access to their online booking service until 31st March 2020. 

Visit  www.healthsite.com.au or phone 03 9592 8986 for more information. 

SMS or Email Communications

You may be required to communicate certain information to your clients regarding a change in working hours, office structure or other notices concerning COVID-19.   Appointment Reminders are a great way to provide this information, to create a new SMS or Email template within Bp Allied, go to Data Maintenance > Reminder Templates.

Medicare Online Claiming

Our development team have rushed out the latest COVID-19 MBS Items for use with Bp Allied.  These items cover patients who have been diagnosed with COVID-19 virus but are not in hospital or patients who have been required to isolate themselves in quarantine.  Bp Allied customers wishing to utilise these MBS Item codes will need to follow the instructions in a PDF here to update the included MBS Item list.

We welcome you to join our discussion forum and share any other hints or tips in managing your practice with your colleagues. 

All the Best!

Authored by:

Melissa_Staff

Melissa Dobell
Account Specialist at Best Practice Software

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Limiting the Spread of COVID-19 with BetterConsult Technology

What if you were able to identify potentially at-risk COVID-19 patients before they step foot inside your practice?

For many people, COVID-19 has necessitated change in daily routines, whether it be stocking up on home essentials, socializing, or working from home. General practice, however, has been put into a unique position, needing to provide care for patients, while also looking after the wellbeing of doctors and Practice staff.

But if you were able to identify potentially at-risk COVID-19 patients before they step foot inside your practice?

HealthShare, a Bp Partner, offers a system aptly dubbed BetterConsult. The solution merges technology with the desire for better information, and it couldn’t come at a more appropriate time, given the current circumstances.

BetterConsult is a digital questionnaire that patients can fill out from the safety of their homes. It allows them to provide relevant details about any current symptoms, recent travel or even potential contact with anyone else who may have been infected by COVID-19. It then produces a simple, easy-to-read report for your Practice to review and plan for accordingly.

So how does this help your Practice? The Australian Government Department of Health is advising that anyone with suspected COVID-19 symptoms notify their GP before attending an appointment. BetterConsult takes that advice and improves upon it by not just being aware of any symptoms, but by assessing how likely it is that a patient might actually be carrying the COVID-19 virus.

BetterConsult also sends an email alert to your Practice so you can call the patient and offer them a telehealth appointment or other protocol that your Practice has implemented.

It makes the patient’s life easier as well. By answering just a few questions prior to attending your Practice, it ensures a more effective consultation, allowing the GP to know the agenda of the patient before the consultation begins.

BetterConsult can be activated within 24 hours at no additional cost for Bp Premier Practices.

Learn more or request a demonstration by calling Healthshare on 1300 787 522

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How Best Practice Software is Handling COVID-19

At Best Practice Software, we are closely monitoring the current and emerging impact of the COVID-19 virus globally and here in Australia. There is substantial concern about the potential impact to the health and wellbeing of Australian residents, but also the impact on our customers alike.

With the rapidly evolving status of the virus, we understand that there is increasing uncertainty in both personal and professional environments. Because of this, we wanted to reach out to you to communicate the actions we, at Best Practice Software, are taking to ensure smooth operations and non-impacted continuity and quality of service.

Uninterrupted Service: Rest assured, you will continue to receive the same high level service from our team.

Implementation of Remote Working: All staff across our Hamilton NZ, Brisbane, Bundaberg and Sydney offices have commenced working from home. Our team environment is mobile and flexible to operate at maximum efficiency on a remote working basis (many of our staff already work remotely). We envision this will have no impact on operational efficiency.

Travel Restrictions: We are cancelling all work-related travel and have advised against any unnecessary personal travel.

We know that recent events are likely impacting your business/Practice also, and hope the impact will be as minimal as possible. We will keep you aware of any further decisions or adjustments and, as always, thank you for your business.

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Human-Centred Software Design – Why Does It Matter?

Human-Centred Software Design

Human-centred design and co-design are becoming the standard terms used when designing customer focused solutions. In fact, co-design is no longer used as tech company lingo, but it’s an approach increasingly used in the public sector. Just go to any medical industry conference and it’s difficult to avoid seeing a presentation that hasn’t been derived from a co-design approach.

So why is a human-centred design approach so important? One of the key mottos at Best Practice Software is ‘designed by a doctor, for a doctor’. This is a key pillar of our organisation. The key purpose of these design concepts is to better understand the evolving needs of your customers and the new challenges that come along with it. We strive to ensure that we address the correct needs of our customers as we build our next generation product, Titanium.

Medical software is an industry that has experienced rapid technological advancement. This transformation is only going to accelerate as we not only adopt cloud-based technology but all the latest advancements that come along with it such as mobile applications, shared health records, e-prescriptions, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, augmented reality and virtual health care services.

Speaking to Our Customers

In software development it is easy to become too feature focused instead of stopping for a moment to re-evaluate the problems we want to solve. Customers have always been at the heart of what we do at Best Practice Software and it has always been important to us to take our user-centered approach to another level with the development of our next generation of products, code-named “Titanium”. So, we decided to go out, speak to customers and listen to what they had to say about the challenges, problems and pain points that they face day-in and day-out in their practices.

We invited customers to a roadshow called “Connect and Evolve” and the purpose was literally to connect with our customers and discuss the evolving needs of their practices. In these sessions it was important to not start with designing solutions and features but to begin by listing out all daily, tasks, activities and routine work. We then started to establish problem statements and listing out time consuming tasks. After that we started to figure out ideal workflows and solutions to address these issues by putting all limitations aside in the technology that we use today.

We ended up with a tremendous amount of insight and feedback not only on the current needs of practices but also on the desired future state of working whether you are a provider, receptionist, a nurse or a practice manager. We are using this feedback in our product roadmap for Titanium and we have continued to speak to even more of our customers by showing prototypes and possible solutions to improve our day to day working life.

Understanding the Real Problems

One of the unique aspects in medical software is that users spend the entire day using the product. As a comparison, if you use marketing software, you only use it for parts of the day or in increments throughout a working day. In medical software you might not leave your screen all day, so designing a solution that understands these needs is absolutely critical.

As our industry and working environments continue to evolve rapidly, we also need to recognise and understand the changing needs and challenges that come with change. This may sound like an obvious statement but in order to drive innovation, it’s necessary to find a way to break the norm by introducing new ways of doing things. This is not an easy task when you speak to users that understandably do not want a disruption in their workflows. The last thing you want to do is force features down the throats of customers whether they like them or not. You need to give them value by delivering better usability, saving time, solving problems and ultimately helping them in improving patient care.

Applying New Technology and Prototyping

Does new technology solve old problems or does new technology create new problems? The reality is probably a bit of both. For instance, moving into cloud-based technology solves a lot of problems. It offers always-on technology available to any location you want to work out of and usually for any device you want to use it with, whether desktop, laptop, tablet or mobile. However, it also introduces a whole layer of complexity with the unknowns of having a stable internet connection, data security and using a browser instead of an application built for an operating system.

We help address these things through rapid prototyping, user testing, and agile development methodologies in our product design. We also conduct a significant amount of market research and learn from our mistakes and the mistakes of others in the industry. There are usually several different solutions or approaches to address a problem. The key is figuring out which is the most appropriate or most promising option to take or technology to choose from. We then prototype, speak to users, test with users, refine the solution, do the development work and complete the feature. For instance, the architecture of Titanium has been completely built from scratch using the latest API-agnostic platform structure to improve development time, scalability, cost efficiency and enabling more third party integrations for Practices.

Gathering feedback from our customers is a job that is never done. We are continuing to ramp up our development work on Titanium with a strong focus on customer experience (CX) and user experience (UX) by actively involving our Practice customers throughout the product design process. It’s a process that starts with the users and ends in a product built to address the current and future needs of our customers.

We value the input of our customers. If you have suggestions for functionality within Titanium, please share your feedback in our Forum, which can be found in the top menu bar of this website.

Authored by: 
Henry Vesander
Henry Vesander
Product Manager at Best Practice Software

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Enhanced Reporting and Evidence-Based Decision Making With Cubiko

Cubiko seamlessly integrates with Bp Premier, to allow Practices to quickly and easily filter and interpret large amounts of data, to enable evidence-based decision making. Cubiko combines data sets to facilitate enhanced reporting and evidence-based decision making for Australian Practices. Dashboard insights allow change to be tracked and monitored to ensure desired results are achieved through an easy to understand, intuitive platform.

Popular Cubiko Metrics

Since Cubiko’s launch in October 2019, the platform has been gaining momentum across the country. Subscribers have embraced new, progressive ways of driving business insight into their Practice every day.

In this feature, we’ll show you some popular metrics that detail how subscribers are transforming their Practices through leveraging the power of their data.

Busiest Booking Time

Cubiko quickly shows the busiest time when the Practice reception team and online booking engine are making appointments in the Diary.

Unbilled Appointments Metric

Early on, Practices were adopting a new focus on data, specifically around the identification of unbilled appointments.

Through this metric, Practices can monitor any unbilled appointments, complete the billing and effectively track as the number of unbilled appointments reduces over time.

10997 Eligible Patients Metric

This metric makes it easier for nurses to provide every opportunity for care. Provide your nurses with a list of today’s patients who qualify for 10997, with a deeper view on appointment data and time per patient.

Special Offer

Between now and 22nd May, Cubiko are offering all new subscribers a $500 credit towards getting Cubiko set-up and running in your practice.

To take advantage of the special offer, book in for a one-on-one demo, or contact the team on 1300 CUBIKO.

Offer ends 22nd May. T’s & C’s apply.

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Q&A With Upcoming Bp Premier Summit Speakers

Bp Premier Summit 2020

Our biennial Bp Premier Summit is just around the corner, and we are extremely proud of this year’s speaker line-up and list of topics. We’ve delivered ten more workshops than 2017, for a total of 24 to choose from, enabling you and your team to completely customise your Summit experience.

To whet your appetite and give you a sneak peek at the impressive talent we’ve secured for the event, we’ve interviewed a few speakers to learn a bit more about them and why they are looking forward to the Summit.

Lachlan McPherson

Lachlan McPherson

Director @ Healthsite

Bp Summit Presentation: Medical Marketing
Healthsite Logo

Q: What do most practices get wrong in relation to marketing?
A: Practices are taking their online presence for granted and have been slow to realise the importance of getting their digital house in order. The practices that have been actively engaged in the area are at a huge advantage – the world has shifted to online marketing and practices need to catch up.

Q: What is your top marketing tip for practices?
A: Invest in a good quality website, online bookings, and social media. Social media isn’t something to be scared of – it is a huge opportunity for you to engage with your patients and gain new patients.

Q: What part of your workshop do you think will resonate most with attendees?
A: We will demystify what has traditionally been a complicated area. We use plain language and layout all aspects of your digital presence in an easy to follow way.

Q: What is your top marketing tip for practices?
A: If you do ONLY one thing – (you shouldn’t only do one thing) then you should claim your Google My Business listing and optimise it. This is the listing that literally puts you on the map

Q: Tell us a bit about yourself
A: I am the owner and founder of Healthsite; a digital business dedicated to the healthcare industry. I am passionate about all things medical. I started my journey in the healthcare industry 15 years ago working at the reception desk of a clinic that was managed by my families’ business. I was lucky enough to be promoted to practice manager, practice acquisition manager and ultimately sitting on the board of that very company. I started my own business along with my wife Missy, Healthsite in 2009 building online and digital products that meet the needs and requirements of today’s busy, pressure filled medical clinics. I’ve always believed we can separate ourselves to the rest by partnering with with our customers to achieve their objectives. We build relationships that matter. Our personal and flexible approach means we’ll deliver on their needs.

Katrina Otto

Katrina Otto

Managing Director @ Train IT Medical

Bp Summit Presentation: The Digital Health Team, Tips & Tricks for Your Practice, Shine Brighter & The Medicare Game Show
Train IT Medical

Q: What is one of the biggest challenges facing practices today? 
A: One of the biggest challenges I see is the shift in thinking required, as we move from the medical record being a memory aid for the doctor, to a clinical handover tool for the patient. This is very new way of thinking. The thriving practices of the future will be the ones who maximise effective use of digital technologies, engage with their patients electronically, and provide flexible delivery of service that best meets the needs of their patients.

Q: What part of your workshop do you think will resonate most with attendees?
A: Tips and Tricks. Bp users are smart and savvy. They are always looking for ways to save clicks and that’s what we’ve got. That sound people make, that, ‘ahhhhh, I didn’t know that’ comment, when you know that tip you shared is going to save them time and/or money or give them peace of mind – that’s gold.  We’ll be running a competition through the conference app too, so everyone will be knowledge sharing. I believe I have the best session of all at the Summit – Tips and Tricks – it’s going to be fantastic!

Q: What Bp Premier tip are you most looking forward to sharing?
A: I have this one tip which I love to share because it gives doctors peace of mind. It is related to results follow-up and is about visibility and audit trails. Bit of suspense there but don’t worry we will be sharing all our tips with absolutely everyone; we share to care.

Q: What area of Bp Premier do you feel is the most commonly underutilised or misunderstood?|
A: Recalls and Reminders ahhhhhh! They are the number one areas I am asked to train on and number one source of frustration for practices due to a lack of familiarity and knowledge. And my number one motivator is ensuring patients never slip through the cracks – this is vitally important to me.

Marcus Wilson

CEO @ Surgical Partners

Bp Summit Presentation: Frictionless Financial Management
Surgical Partners

Q: Tell us a bit about yourself
A: I have been on somewhat of a career journeyman, from an engineering graduate to a healthcare analyst at an investment bank, to a multi-clinic practice management role, and now as a founder of a financial technology that is making management easier for medical practices. I think this diverse background has provided a unique perspective on solving problems in the industry; and I have developed a passion for engineering these solutions and for delivering them to medical practice clients of all sizes, from  single GP sites to the largest corporate groups.

My family of 5 is based in Sydney, and we love to keep the kids active on weekends, be it hiking / cycling in the mountains; or making the most of summer on Sydney’s beaches and waterways, or on the NSW north coast where we try to get away to regularly. I love to meet new people and learn from them – its made me a serial networker and somewhat of a conference tragic. It has kept me on the road in recent years, and has allowed me to socialise with so many across the industry, and across the country – many of whom I consider close friends. There is perhaps too much personal in my professional life!

Q: What will you be presenting on at the Summit?
A: I will be speaking about the exciting opportunities in the digital transformation of practice financial processes. Best Practice users have a huge range of integration partners and complementary technologies available to them – solutions that save practices time, reduce expenses, tighten compliance, drive patient retention and growth, and provide a more attractive offering to customer Doctors. Choosing between options (and implementing them!) can be daunting, and my aim is to help make sense of the options and to provide a practical way forward. We call this “frictionless financial management” – and so much of this future is readily available right now.

Q: What are you looking forward to most at the Bp Premier Summit 2020?
A: I am really looking forward to meeting new people, both Best Practice users and other technology partners, and learning how we can work together for powerful industry outcomes. I love collaborating with our technology partners, so I am particularly excited about working with the Cubiko, Tanda and GrowthMD teams at the event. They are genuine, capable people who really understand the industry, and have so much to offer medical practices. In summary, I just can’t wait to see everyone there!

Join Team Bp at what has become one of Australia’s premier conferences for medical IT!

This year’s theme, Shine Brighter, is focused on empowering, educating and enabling Practice owners, staff and Bp Premier users. Our 6th Bp Summit program is like no other, packing in a wealth of industry experience, leadership, skills and new ideas from inspiring and engaging speakers. The 2020 Summit will give you a unique opportunity to engage with many more of your colleagues, our partners, and vendors of integrated and compatible technologies. We are looking forward to sharing with you a sneak peek of Titanium and other breakthrough products!

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Sunsetting of Older Versions of Bp Premier

Sunsetting of Bp Premier version

Bp Support News: For Australian users of Bp Premier

As part of our ongoing commitment to our customers in supporting seamless patient care and the day-to-day operations of Practices, we continue to release newer versions which offer a range of updates related to regulatory requirements, improvements to security, fixes to known issues, newly added features and enhancements.

For your convenience, we have provided an extensive list of updates which can be accessed by clicking here.

With this in mind, as previously advised in April of last year, from 2nd October 2019, we ceased providing support for all versions of Bp Premier prior to LAVA SP3 1.8.8.810. From 1st July 2020, we will be ceasing support for all version of Bp Premier prior to Jade 1.10.0.880.

Sunsetting will be a continuous process, with support for each version ceasing six months after the newest version has been released. Find out more information here.

Ceasing support includes version-specific templates, old reports, minimum software requirements and access to Bp Support Services.

Our Support team is here to help you upgrade to the latest version of Bp Premier.  In addition, check out our Knowledge Base, which will provide you with all the information you need to upgrade. Click here for more about upgrading to Jade SP2.

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SafeScript April 2020 Requirements for Victorian Practices

Important Information: April 2020 SafeScript Requirements for Victorian Practices

From April 2020 it will be mandatory for all Victorian prescribing clinicians to check SafeScript prior to writing or dispensing a prescription for high-risk medications.

The Drugs, Poisons and Controlled Substances Act 1981 specifies penalties that can be imposed on clinicians if they do not take all reasonable steps to check SafeScript when prescribing or dispensing a high-risk medicine so it is extremely important that your Practice is prepared and has started using SafeScript prior to the April deadline.

The implementation of SafeScript at your Practice will allow prescribing and dispensing records for certain high-risk medicines to be transmitted in real-time to a centralised database which can then be accessed by doctors and pharmacists during a consultation. SafeScript provides prescribers and pharmacists with a clinical tool to make safer decisions about the prescribing or dispensing of high-risk medicines, and facilitate the early identification, treatment and support for patients who are developing signs of dependence.

What can you do to start preparing now?

For Bp Premier Practices:

  • Ensure each clinician has registered for SafeScript via the SafeScript website
  • Ensure you are using the latest release of Bp Premier
  • Your practice must use eRx or MediSecure as your electronic prescription service
  • Your practice must have at least one location in Victoria defined in Setup > Practice Details
  • Enable the ‘Safe Script’ function via Preferences for each prescribing clinician within your Practice

For Bp VIP.net Practices:

  • Ensure each clinician has registered for SafeScript via the SafeScript website
  • Your practice must use eRx as your electronic prescription service
  • Option 1: An integrated version of SafeScript will be available for BpVIP.net users in March 2020. Once this is made available, we recommend installing and configuring SafeScript as soon as possible
  • Option 2: If you would like to start using SafeScript now, users can download a non-integrated version of SafeScript. Please click here for the Installation Guide provided by SafeScript

For VIP Gold Practices:

There will be no integrated solution available for VIP Gold users, due to this prescribing clinicians will need to login to the SafeScript portal and complete a check prior to prescribing any high-risk medications within VIP Gold.

To support our Victorian Practices through this change, we will soon commence engaging those Practices that have not yet started using SafeScript to provide support and guidance in relation to implementing all requirements prior to April 2020.

In the interim, if you would like to know more about SafeScript please visit the SafeScript website and the SafeScript brochure for Healthcare Professionals. The SafeScript General Enquiries team can be contacted on 03 9096 5633 or via email safescript@dhhs.vic.gov.au. Further information regarding this initiative can also be directed to our Commercial Partnership team on 1300 40 1111, option 4.

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World Health Organisation On the Spread of the Deadly Coronavirus

On the 11th and 12th of February, the World Health Organisation (WHO) held a two-day summit in Geneva to discuss progress on the development of tests, drugs and vaccines designed to slow the spread of the deadly coronavirus. More than 300 scientists from around the world dialed in to discus the virus.

Emerging first in China, the disease (now called 2019-nCoV) has now been reported in 24 other countries and is estimated to have infected more than 43,000 people (the vast majority located in Wuhan province).

According to the Department of Health, the two main criteria in determining which patients are a suspected case include:

  1. Travel to (including transit through) mainland China in the 14 days before the onset of illness, OR close contact in the 14 days before the onset of illness, with a confirmed case of 2019-nCoV
  2. A fever OR acute respiratory infection (e.g. shortness of breath or cough) with or without fever

Specific actions for health workers in managing suspected cases can be found on the Australian Government’s Department of Health website.

In this rapidly evolving situation, everyone has a personal responsibility to take simple precautions to reduce exposure to and transmission of the virus.  These include good hand hygiene, covering sneezes and coughs, avoiding contact with anyone who has a fever or cough, and seeking early medical advice and treatment if unwell.

The WHO public advice can be found here:

The RACGP also has a range of dedicated fact sheets on their website:

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Animated and Interactive Healthcare Tools Launched for Bp Premier Customers

Best Practice has partnered with 3DAnatomica (3DA) to deliver the latest technology in animated and interactive healthcare tools, designed to support the delivery of health information and patient engagement.  

In 2014, the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care published a report showing 60% of the Australian population aged 15 to 74 years of age do not achieve an adequate level of health literacy. This report also suggests that health literacy may be a stronger predictor of health status than socioeconomic status. There is also now a growing body of research which supports the retention of medical information and health literacy when delivered via animation.  
 

3DA is an accomplished medical media company with over 20 years’ experience in the production of digital media for the communication of complex health information using 3D, AR & 360 technology. 3DA’s interactive content is anatomically accurate and housed in a fully functional self-contained application, covering the human body’s essential anatomy, its functioning organs, with demonstrations of the effects of disease and treatment. 

Alongside the base 3DA application featuring interactive GlassMan and the body systems, the 3DA Clinic offers a subscription version containing interactive tools and common health conditions for download. The program offers a free 14-day evaluation period and subscribers will benefit from bestinclass health animations and interactive tools, designed to engage your patients and simplify the delivery of complex health information.   
 

Application features include: 
•   360º anatomical viewing 
•   Interactive labelling and annotation  
•   Share and save functions 
•   Augmented Reality (AR) 
•   Device agnostic 
•   Online and offline functionality  
•   Regular release of new conditions 
•   Microsoft and iOS functionality  

Given the increasing demands being placed on clinics for the delivery of health information and services, the 3DA Clinic program is highly applicable to doctors and their practices. The program assists in the delivery of complex health information via easy to understand animationfollow up factsheets and links for patients. Animations are delivered conveniently via a desktop program and iPad.  

3DA Premium will be available at the introductory annual subscription price of $200, which represents a 20% discount, exclusive to Best Practice Bp Premier subscribers. There are also discounted packages for multilicence practices.  
 
3DAnatomica is a trusted partner for the delivery of animated and interactive healthcare tools supporting patient engagement and health literacy.  
3DAnatomica GlassMan
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