# SimpleRef — Full Product Description

> Referral management software for Australian specialist and allied health practices.
> Referral Management, Simplified.

URL: https://simpleref.com.au
App: https://app.simpleref.com.au
Sales: sales@simpleref.com.au
Support: support@simpleref.com.au
Company: StatX Analytics Pty Ltd (ABN 60 679 369 898)

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## Overview

SimpleRef is referral management software purpose-built for Australian specialist medical practices. It replaces spreadsheets, paper folders, and manual tracking with a visual referral board, automated patient communication, and real-time analytics.

The core problem SimpleRef solves: specialist practices receive patient referrals from GPs by fax, email, and post. These referrals need to be triaged, documents collected, appointments booked, and patients kept informed. Most practices track this process in spreadsheets or paper folders, which leads to lost referrals, delayed appointments, frustrated patients, and no visibility into practice performance.

SimpleRef gives practice managers a single screen to see every referral's status, communicate with patients by email (SMS is a paid add-on), and generate reports automatically.

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## Detailed Feature List

### Referral Board
A board showing every referral sorted by status (e.g., New, Triaged, Documents Pending, Booked, Completed, Declined). Practice managers drag referrals between stages. Colour coding and flags highlight urgent or overdue referrals. Filter by doctor, specialty, date range, or status.

### Patient SMS Communication (optional paid add-on, $99/month)
Two-way messaging: patients can reply directly. SMS notifications at key stages (referral received, appointment booked, reminders). Full message history on each patient's timeline. STOP/START opt-out handling built in. Delivery tracking for every message. Messages are sent through TouchSMS, an Australian gateway; a dedicated per-practice sender number is not provisioned today.

SMS uses a credit-based system:
- Starter plan: 500 credits/month included ($99/mo add-on)
- Professional plan: 750 credits/month included ($99/mo add-on)
- 1 credit = 1 SMS segment (160 characters). Longer messages use multiple credits.
- Top-up packs: $30 per 500 credits
- Credits never expire — rolling balance carries forward
- Usage alerts at 80% and 0% balance
- If the credit balance reaches zero, SMS sending is paused until more credits are purchased — no overage charges

### Patient Email Communication
Included on every plan. Customisable email templates, sent under your practice's name with reply-to set to the practice's email address. Emails carry SimpleRef's own header logo — practice-branded (white-label) email is not available. Timeline tracking for all sent emails.

### Analytics Dashboard
Real-time metrics: referral volume, conversion rates (referral to appointment), average wait times by stage, referral sources, specialty demand. Goal tracking with configurable targets. Period-over-period comparison (week, month, quarter). Collapsible chart sections for pipeline analysis, performance, and business intelligence. Full dashboards, pipeline analysis, and business intelligence included on all plans.

### Workflow Stages (concierge setup)
Each practice's referral stages are built to match how it actually triages. This is a service, not a self-serve editor: tell us your process and we build it into your board. A practice is not handed a template designer to configure itself. Multiple templates can be run for different referral types, alongside the system steps (New, Completed, Declined).

### AI Intake (AI Document Processing)
Upload referral letters (PDF, image) and AI extracts patient details, referral reason, GP information, and clinical notes. Review and confirm extracted data before saving. Powered by Google Gemini. Included in every plan. Note: documents uploaded to AI Intake are sent to Google's AI service, which is not hosted in Australia. AI Intake is included in every plan. No document is sent to Google's AI service unless your team uploads it to AI Intake.

### Patient Document Upload Links
The practice can send a patient a secure, expiring upload link so imaging, results or a referral letter arrive as files against the right patient instead of by email or in person. The practice team still creates and reviews the referral; there is no patient-facing self-registration or intake form.

### Doctor View
Doctors see only their patients and their workload. Minimal interface — no admin features, no training required. Works on mobile (PWA). Auto-redirect to doctor-specific dashboard after login.

### Team Management
Unlimited staff users on all plans. Role-based access: practice manager, doctor, staff. Invite users by email with automatic account linking. Doctor seat limits enforced by plan tier (4 for Starter, 10 for Professional, unlimited for Enterprise).

### Multi-Tenant Architecture
Each practice's data is scoped to its own tenant. Practice-level settings (practice name, email templates). Tenant-scoped Firestore collections, with server-side security rules authorising every read and write against the caller's tenant.

### Security and Data Location
- Patient records hosted on Google Cloud in Sydney (australia-southeast1). Exception: AI Intake is included in every plan and cannot be switched off, but nothing is sent to Google unless someone uploads a document to it — uploaded documents go to Google's AI service for extraction, which is not hosted in Australia
- Second exception: Stripe processes billing offshore. It never receives clinical records
- SimpleRef holds no third-party security certifications. What follows is a description of the controls themselves, not of any framework
- Encryption in transit (TLS) and at rest
- Role-based Firestore security rules
- SMS opt-out/opt-in compliance (STOP/START keywords)
- Patient consent enforcement on all communication channels
- Data export and deletion functions aligned with the Privacy Act 1988 (Australian Privacy Principles)
- Data retention enforcement (automated daily cleanup)
- Audit logging for sensitive operations
- Session management and security

### Progressive Web App
Works on any device with a modern browser — desktop, tablet, phone. Install to home screen for app-like experience. Offline support with Firestore persistent cache. No native app download required.

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## Pricing

### Starter — AUD $299/month
- Up to 4 doctor accounts
- Unlimited referrals, patients, and staff users
- Referral board with stages built to your process (concierge setup)
- Patient timeline and communication history
- Basic reporting

Included at Starter pricing: AI Intake, email, and the full analytics dashboard.
Optional add-on:
- SMS Integration: $99/mo (500 credits)

### Professional — AUD $499/month
- Up to 10 doctor accounts
- All Starter features
- Priority support

Included at Professional pricing: AI Intake, email, and the full analytics dashboard.
Optional add-on:
- SMS Integration: $99/mo (750 credits)

### Enterprise — Custom Pricing
- Unlimited doctor accounts
- Custom integrations and onboarding
- Dedicated account manager
- Custom SMS pricing available

### SMS Credit Details
- 1 credit = 1 SMS segment (160 characters)
- Top-up packs: $30 per 500 credits
- Credits never expire
- SMS sending pauses at zero balance — no overage charges

### General
- No per-user fees (staff accounts are unlimited)
- No setup fees to subscribe (optional managed data migration is quoted separately as a one-time fee)
- No lock-in contracts
- Free 14-day trial (no credit card required; payment begins at the third user or day 14, whichever comes first)
- Monthly billing via Stripe

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## Target Audience

### Primary: Practice Managers
The person who receives, triages, and tracks referrals daily. Typically managing 20-50+ referrals per week across spreadsheets, folders, and memory. They need visibility, efficiency, and a system they can trust.

### Secondary: Practice Owners / Lead Specialists
Want to know how the practice is performing — referral volume, conversion rates, wait times, bottlenecks. Need reporting without asking the practice manager to manually count things.

### Specialties Served
Orthopaedics, cardiology, dermatology, ENT, gastroenterology, urology, ophthalmology, neurology, endocrinology, rheumatology, respiratory medicine, general surgery, plastic surgery, and any other specialist practice receiving GP referrals.

### Practice Size
- Solo specialists with a practice manager
- Small group practices (2-4 specialists)
- Medium group practices (5-10 specialists)
- Large multi-site practices (Enterprise plan)

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## Competitive Positioning

### What SimpleRef is NOT
- Not a general practice management system (it manages referrals, not billing, rostering, or clinical notes)
- Not a CRM adapted for healthcare (it's purpose-built for the GP-to-specialist referral workflow)
- Not a US product localised for Australia (built here, for how referrals work here)
- Not enterprise-only software (designed for the typical 3-8 doctor practice)

### Key Differentiators
1. Purpose-built for referral management (not a generic CRM or PM tool)
2. Australian-made, patient records hosted in Sydney (local context; documents uploaded to AI Intake are processed by Google's AI service outside Australia)
3. Flat monthly pricing with unlimited staff users (no per-user fees that punish growth)
4. Set up in minutes (no consultants, no training programs, no IT projects)
5. Patient SMS through an Australian gateway, as a paid add-on
6. AI-powered document processing (reduce manual data entry from referral letters)
7. Practice manager-first design (built for the person who actually does the work)

### Alternatives (and how SimpleRef differs)
- **Spreadsheets/paper:** No visibility, no automation, referrals get lost. SimpleRef tracks everything automatically.
- **Generic CRMs (HubSpot, Salesforce):** built around a sales pipeline, so a practice has to configure one into a healthcare shape. SimpleRef ships with the GP-to-specialist pathway already modelled.
- **Practice management systems (Best Practice, Genie Solutions, MedicalDirector):** a PMS is built around billing, clinical notes and appointments; SimpleRef is built around the inbound referral, and practices generally run both. For what any PMS does today, read their own site — we do not characterise their feature sets.
- **Hospital referral systems:** Designed for hospital-to-hospital referrals, not GP-to-specialist private practice referrals. SimpleRef is built for the specialist practice context.

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## Australian Healthcare Context

SimpleRef is designed for the Australian healthcare system, specifically the GP-to-specialist referral pathway:

1. A GP sees a patient and writes a referral letter to a specialist
2. The referral arrives at the specialist practice (by fax, email, post, or increasingly via digital channels)
3. The practice manager receives and triages the referral
4. Documents may need to be collected (imaging, blood work, previous records)
5. The patient is contacted and an appointment is booked
6. The specialist sees the patient
7. A report is sent back to the referring GP

This process can take days to months. SimpleRef tracks every step so that no referral is lost, no patient is forgotten, and the practice has full visibility into how the process is performing.

Medicare and private health insurance billing happen outside SimpleRef — it focuses purely on the referral management workflow.

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## Technical Details

- Frontend: React 19, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS
- Backend: Firebase Cloud Functions v2 (Node.js)
- Database: Cloud Firestore (multi-tenant, subcollection architecture)
- Hosting: Firebase Hosting (Google Cloud, Sydney region)
- Authentication: Firebase Auth (email/password)
- Storage: Firebase Cloud Storage (referral documents, practice assets)
- AI: Google Gemini (document processing)
- SMS: TouchSMS API (Australian SMS gateway)
- Email: Google Workspace SMTP (Nodemailer)
- Payments: Stripe (AUD)
- PWA: Workbox for offline support
- Testing: Vitest (2,800+ unit tests), Playwright (27 E2E tests)
- CI/CD: GitHub Actions with Workload Identity Federation

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## Contact

- Website: https://simpleref.com.au
- App: https://app.simpleref.com.au
- Sales: sales@simpleref.com.au
- Support: support@simpleref.com.au
- Company: StatX Analytics Pty Ltd
- ABN: 60 679 369 898
- Location: Australia