New app reduces wait times for NDIS participants

A new web app developed by a University of Melbourne alum is dramatically reducing wait times for National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) recipients by simplifying the process of finding practitioners.

Melbourne-based startup Support Sorted connects NDIS participants with available clinicians including speech pathologists, occupational therapists and psychologists that match their individual needs.

Founder Dr Sam Donegan said he built the platform to solve a simple problem to address family wait times.

Support Sorted has already successfully matched more than 250 NDIS participants with suitable practitioners.

“Most of these children were previously on waitlists for 12 months or longer and within an hour or two after using our app, their parents were organising an appointment with an available clinician in their area,” Dr Donegan said.

​​​"Families are spending weeks, even months, calling or trying to book into any clinic they can find, only to be told ‘we're full’, but there's not a shortage of clinicians.

“The real issue is that there's a visibility problem as many smaller providers don't advertise and are buried so far down search results or directories that parents never find them.

“Unless a parent knows exactly where to look, they're stuck, and their child could miss out on care long after the funding they were entitled to has expired.”

Families often seek out alternative therapies if NDIS funding expires before their family member can be treated by an accredited clinician.

“In many cases, these vulnerable families end up using their NDIS funding on treatments that aren’t evidence-based and in worst case scenarios, they’re falling victim to snake-oil scams,” Dr Donegan said.

He developed an AI algorithm to email and SMS thousands of licensed healthcare professionals across Australia.

These health experts were asked a series of questions including their availability, gender, experience, what types of clients they see and don’t see, their treatment approach, if they work with children and if they have kids of their own.

By drawing on this dataset, the web app allows users to tailor their search for practitioners by asking the AI chat service to compile a list of available clinicians that meet certain criteria. These can include the family’s ​​preferred location, home visit availability and the type of therapy they’re looking for.

“Our search function is free for parents and generates instant results, saving families time and money that would otherwise be spent on hiring a support coordinator to manually conduct the same research,” Dr Donegan said.

“Research has shown it’s crucial for children with disabilities to undergo therapy during the first seven years of their life as it’s a critical period in which they develop skills for lifelong learning and support interventions during this time can prevent the child from falling behind their peers.”

Dr Donegan and his team have received expert entrepreneurial support from the University of Melbourne to help scale up their not-for-profit, including $20,000 in funding through the Melbourne Accelerator Program.

Melbourne Accelerator Program (MAP) is one of a range of entrepreneurial programs run out of Melbourne Entrepreneurial Centre (MEC) at the University of Melbourne.

Download the app via supportsorted.com.