Billing clients for medical services is an extremely time consuming and repetitive process. All sorts of details such as Medicare numbers, insurance information, hospital procedures and copies of hospital stickers have to be included in the paperwork.
Robyn Gillies is an anaesthetist at the Royal Melbourne Hospital and manages her own private patients. Her invoicing and billing paperwork was taking up far too much time, so she asked her husband to develop something that would make billing her clients easier.
Her husband, Alastair Stott (pictured), is the director of an IT Consultancy company called ‘Schmik’ and his area of expertise is mobile technologies.
Alastair solved the billing nightmare with ‘Bill’, a web based application which enables medical specialists to record data on a handheld device.
The hand held device must be one which connects to the internet wirelessly, such as via the Next G™ network or Wi-Fi, as the data is stored on the web and then downloaded to a hand held device or computer whenever it is required.
With 3G technology it only takes about 3 seconds to download each screen.
Robyn said Bill has totally transformed the way she prepares her billing and invoice details.
“It doesn’t matter where I am, I just enter the data into my hand held device. Then it is automatically stored on the web.
“Bill is easy to use and it saves me so much time organising all the information I have to compile.
“Now I only have to enter details on the system once, whereas previously I had to duplicate it on various forms.
“It used to take me weeks to get the billing paperwork out the door, now it only takes 24 hours” said Robyn.
Alastair said Bill can be accessed from any computer or ‘smartphone’ that can connect to the internet.
"It is the first web-based billing application designed specifically for the smaller smartphone screens,” said Alastair.
And the news is good for medical specialists as there is further development on the way.
Using 3.5 next generation technology, Alastair is now developing web based applications for medical case studies and critical incident reporting.
Schmik, Alastair’s IT consultancy, is also looking at developing billing applications for other professions such as veterinarians and trades people.
To find out more about Alastair Stott and Schmik, visit the Schmik website (schmik.com.au).