Amanda Mullen, Cindy Eades, Titan Optical's Cam Gordon, GoodX Software's Samantha Foulston and Hannah Cassidy at RANZCO NZ 2024 in Auckland

In an ocean of technical advances, a one-stop software shop, offering a fully customised, device-agnostic practice management system to ophthalmology clinics, was described as a technology breakthrough at RANZCO 2024. “GoodX brings a different software package to New Zealand, which no one else seems to have really successfully implemented in the past,” explained Cam Gordon, managing director of Titan Optical, the New Zealand distributor of GoodX software.

The possibilities were limitless, he said. “There are other software products in the market that are good, but they might not tick certain boxes that people need, so a lot of practices will run multiple pieces of software. GoodX covers all the bases from a patient accessible portal for managing appointments, clinical notes, diary management, accounting management, VOIP (voice over internet protocol) and SMS (text) integration… the list goes on and on.”

Shifting from a desktop to a web-based system was appealing to New Zealand clinicians, said GoodX regional manager Samantha Foulston, because regardless of where you are in the country, or the world, the information and data is consolidated into one place. “This is a full practice-management system. You can link your patients to one system, to a file, to invoicing, to your devices. We can automate that process.” So the data a practitioner gathers with their autorefractor, for example, is collected automatically, instead of someone making notes. “Which means your staff have more time; you don’t have that workload anymore,” she said.

While it was still early days, the initial response from New Zealand eyecare practitioners has been encouraging, said Gordon. “Uptake so far is actually going really well. Software like this is a huge project for any clinic. They use their practice management software every day and it’s an integral part of the workflow. So, to even consider a change is quite serious. We’ve already got one customer who is having it installed next month and I’m in talks with several other very large ophthalmology practices about it. They seem to be very interested in what we have to offer.”

It is a breakthrough in communication and access because doctors and practices want everything electronically at their fingertips at the same time, said Foulston. “Being web-based, you can go to any device to access it, from a laptop to a phone. If you are travelling the world to conferences and you need to look at a patient file, you can just open it.”

The system is also customised to the clinic, she said. “You see their logo; it’s theirs.” When booking or confirming appointments, patients are automatically sent the files they need to fill in, with no need for them to be printed out, she said, adding the clinic can also ustomise the forms it wishes to send, such as questionnaires or consent forms.

For doctors who like to write, there is a stylus pen and an audio component if they prefer voice typing, said Foulston. “When you’re doing procedures, you can upload from a camera, video and voice notes, and if you lose internet you can join from your cellphone; you can carry on. Wherever you are in the world – Canada, Zimbabwe, New Zealand – everything is saved. So, if one of the cards blows up, we have backup.”