Patients with digital pathology requests from Australia’s three largest private pathology providers will soon be able to easily use their e-referral at any participating collection centre thanks to a new interoperable capability created by Magentus.
Sonic Healthcare, Australian Clinical Labs and Healius Pathology Network are now all participating in the Digital Patient Choice initiative. The breakthrough means that, for the first time, digital pathology requests will be easily portable between private providers in Australia, adding structured data exchange, real-time tracking and reduced transcription risk.
The capability is part of the eMagentus eRequests platform, which augments paper pathology and radiology request forms with a structured digital workflow available to two-thirds of Australia’s specialists through the Genie and Gentu practice management platforms.
With Sonic Healthcare, Australian Clinical Labs and Healius Pathology network now all taking part, the digital portability capability will cover the majority of specialist-initiated private pathology requests nationally.
Michael Strachan, Head of Strategic Partnerships at Magentus, said:
“Patients have always had the right to take a request to any provider. What we’ve done is extend that same choice into the digital pathway and in doing so, improved the process. When a digital request moves between providers, the clinical data arrives intact. There’s no re-keying from a printed form, no risk of transcription errors, and referring specialists can track the request from start to finish regardless of where the patient is tested.
“Sometimes the closest collection centre isn’t the provider named on the request, and that’s enough to delay a test or put someone off altogether. With portability, a patient can walk into a participating centre with a request from another provider and have it processed there and then. That’s a better experience, and it’s how the system should work.”
Digital patient choice means a patient with a pathology request from one provider can present it at a participating collection centre run by a different provider, and have the request processed digitally — with the clinical data transferred intact between systems. Sonic Healthcare, Australian Clinical Labs, and Healius Pathology Network are all committed to the service, with implementation progressing across their collection networks. With Sonic and ACL now processing cross-provider requests, Healius’ go-live will see the three providers collectively covering more than 80 per cent of specialist-initiated private pathology requests nationally.
How digital pathology portability works
When a specialist sends a digital pathology request through Genie or Gentu, the patient receives a notification from the diagnostic provider with their testing details and a barcode token for their request. That token is recognisable at any participating collection centre. The receiving laboratory’s systems read the request data directly: no phone calls, no re-entering information, no paper.
For referring specialists, the eRequests platform tracks every request from creation through to result delivery, regardless of which laboratory ultimately processes the test.
The national standard behind digital pathology portability
Portability between competing providers depends on two things: a shared technical standard for how requests are structured and exchanged, and a shared clinical language so that a test ordered by one laboratory means the same thing when it arrives at another.
The technical standard is AU eRequesting Release 1.0, published by HL7 Australia and supported by the Government-funded Sparked FHIR Accelerator program. The standard was developed through an open, consensus-driven process involving diagnostic providers, software vendors, government agencies, clinical bodies, and domain experts — coordinated by the Australian Digital Health Agency, the Department of Health and Aged Care, CSIRO, and HL7 Australia. It was refined through multiple rounds of public consultation, Connectathon testing, and working group review.
Magentus’s eRequests platform, in production since 2023, has a close alignment with the published standard, reflecting the same design patterns. Magentus is actively working toward full conformance as the standard matures through its trial-use phase.
The shared clinical language is the RCPA’s SPIA pathology requesting terminology list, now adopted across participating providers. Without that common terminology, a test ordered by one provider’s system could be ambiguous or misinterpreted by another. With it, cross-provider processing becomes feasible and safe.
Dr Andy Bond, Interoperability Architect at Magentus, said:
“This demonstrates what open standards can achieve when industry and government invest together. The requesting standard wasn’t designed in isolation, it was shaped by real clinical data from production systems, then refined through years of industry scrutiny and testing. The result is a specification the whole sector helped build and the whole sector can use.”
What’s next: radiology eRequesting
Magentus is now working with radiology partners to extend the same model into diagnostic imaging, applying the same combination of open standards, shared terminology, and cross-provider portability to radiology requests.
Frequently asked questions
Can I take my digital pathology request to a different provider?
Yes, you’ve always been able to choose your pathology provider, whether your request is on paper or digital. What’s new is that digital requests can now be processed directly by a different provider’s systems. When you present your barcode token at a participating collection centre run by a different provider, the receiving laboratory reads your request data automatically: same test details, same clinical information, no manual re-entry. The referring specialist retains full visibility on the request throughout.
Which pathology providers are participating?
Sonic Healthcare, Australian Clinical Labs, and Healius Pathology Network are all committed to the service, with implementation progressing across their collection networks. Sonic and ACL are processing cross-provider requests now, with Healius also going live the three providers will collectively cover more than 80 per cent of specialist-initiated private pathology requests in Australia.
What is eRequesting?
eRequesting is the process of sending pathology or radiology test requests electronically from a specialist’s practice management software to a diagnostic provider. The Magentus eRequests platform, available through the Genie and Gentu practice management systems used by around two-thirds of Australia’s specialists, augments paper request forms with a digital workflow. Referring specialists can track every request from creation through to result delivery, and patients receive a notification from their diagnostic provider with their testing details and a barcode token they can present at a participating collection centre.
How does digital portability differ from paper patient choice?
Patient choice has always existed with paper. Every branded pathology request form in Australia includes a patient choice advisory statement, and patients are free to take that form to whichever provider they prefer. But when a paper form arrives at a different provider, the receiving laboratory has to manually re-enter the clinical and patient information, introducing transcription risk and slowing processing, with no way for the referring specialist to track the request.
Digital portability improves on that experience. The request data is structured using the HL7 FHIR open standard and shared clinical terminology (the RCPA SPIA requesting terminology list), so when a digital request moves between providers, the test details arrive intact and are interpreted consistently. There’s no re-keying, no ambiguity about what was ordered, and the referring specialist can see the status of the request from start to finish, regardless of which laboratory processes it.
Will this work for radiology?
Magentus is extending the same approach into diagnostic imaging. Several radiology providers, including Queensland X-Ray, Lumus Imaging, and Castlereagh Imaging, are already connected to the eRequests platform, and work is underway to enable the same cross-provider portability for radiology requests. The goal is to give patients and referring specialists the same flexibility and visibility for imaging that now exists for pathology.
