The short answer
Paediatric speech pathology, occupational therapy and multidisciplinary clinics run on NDIS funding, Medicare complex neurodevelopmental disorder referrals and private fees, with waitlists that can run for months, sessions in schools and kindies, and heavy report writing. Platforms such as Splose, Cliniko, Lumary, Zanda and Nookal cover bookings, notes and NDIS invoicing. The custom work worth funding sits around them: waitlist and intake portals that keep families informed, parent facing goal and home program apps, funding trackers that span NDIS and Medicare, and report drafting that therapists check and sign.
Key takeaways
- Medicare's complex neurodevelopmental disorder items allow up to 20 allied health treatment services and 8 assessment services per patient's lifetime, for patients under 25, with a review after 4 assessment services.
- NDIS maximum prices for 2026 to 27 are set by the Minister's pricing determination, in schedules effective 24 September 2026, and apply to NDIA managed and plan managed participants.
- Occupational therapists are regulated under AHPRA; speech pathology is not one of the professions covered by its 15 National Boards, so clinics need professional governance that covers both.
- In NSW a Working With Children Check clearance is valid for 5 years with continuous monitoring, and your rostering should know who is cleared before they visit a school.
- AI can draft reports from therapists' notes and assessment scores, but a therapist checks and signs every report before a family, school or funder sees it.
Why do paediatric clinics outgrow single discipline software?
Because one child is often seen by a speech pathologist, an occupational therapist and sometimes a psychologist, funded from more than one source, with parents, teachers and a paediatrician all waiting on information. Most allied health platforms were designed around one practitioner seeing one adult client at a time. They handle bookings, notes and invoices well. A multidisciplinary paediatric clinic adds a layer they rarely handle well: a shared picture of the child across disciplines, family communication, and funding that comes from several places at once.
The professions are also regulated differently. AHPRA lists 15 National Boards, including the Occupational Therapy Board and the Psychology Board. Speech pathology isn’t among them. A clinic’s policies on records, consent and AI therefore can’t simply defer to AHPRA guidance for everyone; they need to cover every discipline on the team to the same standard.
One child, several funding sources
The system should know, for every session, which funder pays and how much funding is left.
| Funding source | What sets the limit | What your system tracks |
|---|---|---|
| NDIS, NDIA managed or plan managed | Participant plan, service agreement, maximum prices in the pricing schedule | Funds committed and used per line item, plan end date |
| NDIS, self managed | Participant plan and service agreement | Same, with invoices to the family |
| Medicare complex neurodevelopmental disorder items | Treatment and management plan, lifetime caps | Assessment and treatment services used, review points |
| Medicare chronic condition referral | GP plan, 5 allied health services a calendar year | Services used across disciplines |
| Private fees and health funds | Family budget, fund extras limits | Quotes and gap amounts |
The NDIA says the Minister’s pricing determination sets maximum prices for the 2026 to 27 financial year, published in pricing schedules effective 24 September 2026. Those maximums apply to NDIA managed and plan managed participants, and providers can’t charge more. At the time of writing, the NDIA says updated pricing and claiming guidance documents will be published shortly, following new NDIS legislation. That guidance is where the rules on non face to face time, report writing and provider travel live, so treat them as configuration your team can update, not logic hard coded into the system.
Medicare’s complex neurodevelopmental disorder (NDD) items are the other big pathway. The MBS notes say a paediatrician or psychiatrist prepares a treatment and management plan, after which eligible allied health practitioners can provide up to 20 treatment services per patient’s lifetime, and up to 8 assessment services per lifetime, with a review by the paediatrician after 4. The items cover patients under 25. A treatment item such as 82015 requires sessions of at least 30 minutes and a written report back to the referring practitioner at the end of a course.
Waitlists that run for months
A waitlist is a communication problem as much as a scheduling one. Families waiting for a paediatric therapy place often ring every few weeks, and intake staff spend hours answering the same question. A waitlist and intake portal fixes most of that:
- Referrals arrive from paediatricians, GPs, schools and families through one online form, with documents attached.
- Families complete an intake: concerns, funding, availability, school or kindy, and preferred location.
- Intake staff confirm the funding pathway and the disciplines needed, and set a priority.
- The family receives an honest estimate and a regular, automatic update, with a one click option to stay on or leave.
- When a place opens, the system offers it to the next suitable family on the list, matched to the clinician’s discipline, availability and location.
- Managers see real demand by discipline, funding type and suburb, which supports hiring decisions.
Document extraction at step 1 is a routine AI document processing task, with staff confirming every field.
Goals and home programs that parents will use
Therapy progress depends on practice between sessions, so the home program has to be easy for a tired parent to follow on a phone. A parent app built for a clinic typically includes:
- The child’s current goals in plain language, as agreed with the therapist.
- Short videos of home activities recorded by the therapist.
- A tap to log practice, which the therapist sees before the next session.
- Appointment times, locations and reminders, including school visits.
- Shared documents the therapist chooses to release, such as reports.
The test of a good design is how long the therapist needs to update it after a session. If it is more than a minute or two, it won’t be kept current. Our web app vs mobile app guide helps decide whether this should be a native app or a web app parents add to their home screen.
School and kindy visits: scheduling, travel and checks
Visits outside the clinic need the roster to know where each therapist is going, how long the travel takes, and whether they are cleared to work with children there. In NSW, Service NSW says a Working With Children Check clearance is valid for 5 years, with the holder continuously monitored. Other states run their own checks. A rostering layer should hold each therapist’s check status and expiry, block bookings at schools if a check is missing or expired, record the consent the family gave for school based sessions, and capture travel time so it can be billed where the funding rules allow.
The report writing load: where AI helps, and where it must not
Report writing is the single biggest unpaid time sink in many paediatric practices, and AI drafting can cut it, provided the therapist checks and owns every word. Typical reports include NDIS progress and plan review reports, school reports, assessment summaries and letters back to the paediatrician at the end of a Medicare course.
A drafting assistant pulls the therapist’s session notes, goal progress, standardised assessment scores and home practice logs into the right structure. The therapist edits and signs. AHPRA’s guidance, which applies to registered practitioners such as OTs and psychologists, says practitioners must apply human judgement to AI output, remain accountable and obtain informed consent before patients’ personal data is used in an AI tool. Apply the same rules to speech pathologists. For children, consent comes from the parent or guardian, and every child’s record is health information under the Privacy Act.
Things AI should not do here: diagnose, choose assessment results, recommend funding levels to the NDIA on its own, or send anything to a family or funder without a therapist’s approval. The AI in healthcare page explains why diagnosis features change a tool’s regulatory status.
What do these builds cost?
Indicative market ranges run from about $20,000 for a waitlist and intake portal to $110,000 for a parent goal and home program app (AUD, ex GST). Conduct’s 2026 guide puts mid sized Australian agencies at $150 to $330 an hour, so $50,000 buys roughly 150 to 330 hours.
| Build | Indicative range (AUD, ex GST) | Main cost driver |
|---|---|---|
| Waitlist and intake portal | $20k to $55k | Platform integration, intake pathways, notifications |
| Report drafting assistant with therapist review | $30k to $80k | Report templates, data sources, evaluation, Australian hosting |
| Parent goal and home program app | $40k to $110k | Native or web app, video handling, platform sync |
These are planning ranges, not quotes, and exclude hosting and subscriptions.
How AWLabs approaches paediatric therapy projects
We check first whether your allied health platform can be configured to cover the need. If custom work is justified, every build starts with our Discovery Audit, a fixed fee credited in full against the build, where we map your funding mix, intake pathways and reporting load with your team. You then receive a fixed price Schedule of Work with three options: The Minimum, The Recommended and The Complete. Senior engineers lead every build, updates arrive every Tuesday and Friday, Sydney time, and code and IP are assigned to you as they are paid for. We haven’t yet delivered a project for a paediatric therapy clinic; your clinical leads and advisers own the clinical, funding and consent decisions. Support work providers should read our NDIS provider software page, and clinics with adult musculoskeletal caseloads our physiotherapy software page. The automation behind most of these builds is our workflow automation service.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best allied health software for a paediatric clinic?
For most paediatric clinics, the best choice is a mainstream allied health platform with strong NDIS invoicing and service agreements, such as Splose, Cliniko, Lumary, Zanda or Nookal, picked on how well it handles your funding mix and multidisciplinary teams. We don't resell any of them. Custom software fits the gaps: intake and waitlists, parent apps, cross funding tracking and report drafting.
How do we track Medicare complex neurodevelopmental disorder sessions?
Medicare allows up to 20 treatment services across the eligible allied health items over the child's lifetime, after a paediatrician or psychiatrist prepares a treatment and management plan. Because the cap is lifetime and shared across disciplines, the clinic should ask families what has been used elsewhere and record it, then count every session it provides against the total.
Can families see their child's goals and home program in an app?
Yes. A parent app can show the goals agreed with the therapist, short video demonstrations of home activities, a simple way to log practice, and upcoming appointments. It works when therapists can update it in a minute after a session. It should never display clinical notes the therapist hasn't chosen to share.
Can AI write our NDIS progress reports?
AI can draft a report from the therapist's session notes, goal progress and assessment scores, in the structure the NDIA or a school expects. The therapist then edits, checks and signs it. AHPRA's guidance makes registered practitioners such as OTs accountable for AI output, and the same standard should apply to speech pathologists in the clinic.
How should we manage a waitlist of several months?
Collect the referral and intake information once, confirm the funding pathway, give families an honest estimate, and contact them at a regular interval with an option to stay on the list or leave. A waitlist portal that does this automatically frees intake staff from phone calls and gives the clinic real numbers on demand by discipline and funding type.
Is this different from NDIS provider software?
Yes. This page is about clinical therapy practices. Providers of daily living supports, supported independent living and SCHADS rostered support work have different needs, covered on our NDIS provider software page.
This page is general information about Australian law and regulation, current at the date shown. It is not legal advice. Get advice from a qualified lawyer about your circumstances.
Sources
- MBS item 82015 and complex neurodevelopmental disorder explanatory notes, MBS Online
- Pricing arrangements, National Disability Insurance Agency
- National Boards, Ahpra
- Meeting your professional obligations when using Artificial Intelligence in healthcare, Ahpra
- Apply for a Working With Children Check, Service NSW
- APP Guidelines, Chapter B: Key concepts, Office of the Australian Information Commissioner
- How much does software development cost in Australia?, Conduct