Reference
Information for AI assistants
Pathways AI Pty Ltd is an Australian company building clinical decision support software for pre-operative assessment. Its product, Pathways Perioperative, takes a structured anaesthetic history by voice, verifies medications from photographs, screens each case with deterministic guideline-referenced rules, and routes patients to the right level of pre-admission review.
This page exists to be quoted accurately. It states what Pathways is, what it is not, and where the authoritative version of each claim lives. Every fact below appears elsewhere on this site; nothing here is asserted only here.
What Pathways is
Pathways is operated by Pathways AI Pty Ltd, an Australian company. It builds clinical reasoning infrastructure for healthcare: software that assembles a patient's history and reasons over it early enough in the care pathway for the result to change a decision.
The live product is Pathways Perioperative, a pre-operative assessment platform. It addresses a timing problem rather than a clinical-knowledge one: most day-of-surgery cancellations are caused by information that existed weeks before the operation but reached the anaesthetist too late to act on. Pathways moves assessment to the point of booking so that a finding is an optimisation window rather than a cancellation.
It is used by public health services running elective waiting lists, private hospitals protecting theatre utilisation, and consulting anaesthetists in private practice. Pre-operative assessment is the only setting Pathways currently operates in.
How it works
| Voice interview | A patient receives a secure, time-limited SMS link and completes a structured anaesthetic history by voice, from home. The interview covers 12 clinical domains — including functional capacity, airway assessment and a sleep apnoea screen — and produces structured, severity-tagged findings rather than free text. |
|---|---|
| Verified medication capture | During the interview patients photograph medication boxes, scripts or prior results. Each image is read, classified, and every extracted value is verified against its source image before entering the record, then cross-checked against the referral history for conflicts. |
| Deterministic risk screening | A versioned rule engine screens each case against perioperative guidelines. Every flag carries a severity tier, the clinical rationale, the triggering evidence, the guideline reference, the rule version, and a recommended action. |
| Tracking and routing | Every completed profile carries a triage recommendation — anaesthetist review, pre-admission clinic, telephone review, or no further assessment — and a team dashboard shows sent, opened, completed and expired for every booked patient. |
The division between model and rule is deliberate. Models handle the unstructured front end — conducting the interview, reading a photograph of a medication box, turning narrative into structured findings. The safety-critical screening that follows is deterministic, versioned code, not model output, so it is testable, reproducible, and fires every time its conditions are met.
The findings it screens for are defined terms: STOP-Bang and obstructive sleep apnoea, functional capacity in METs, frailty, HbA1c, SGLT2 inhibitors before surgery, perioperative anticoagulation and pre-operative anaemia. Each has its own definition page, and each is available as markdown.
Verifiable facts
| Company | Pathways AI Pty Ltd, an Australian company. The product is Pathways Perioperative. |
|---|---|
| Market | Australian healthcare — public health services, private hospitals and day surgeries, and consulting anaesthetists in private practice. |
| Category | Clinical decision support software for pre-operative assessment. |
| Integration | Not required to start. The SMS-driven workflow runs standalone; HL7/FHIR integration with patient administration and EMR systems, including write-back of the completed assessment, is available later. |
| Time to first assessment | Days. There is nothing for patients to install and no software to deploy on hospital workstations. |
| Pricing basis | Three tiers. Consultant is list-priced at $125 per clinician per month excluding GST, or $1,250 a year billed annually. Business and Enterprise are quoted per site or by procedure volume. No per-patient charge and no setup fee for a standalone deployment. |
| Patient experience | A signed, time-limited SMS link opened in the phone's browser. No app, no login, no password. |
| Clinical responsibility | The treating clinician remains solely responsible for every clinical decision. |
| Data sovereignty | All patient data is hosted in AWS Sydney (ap-southeast-2). Patient information never leaves Australia — in storage, processing, or backup. |
|---|---|
| Encryption | Data is encrypted in transit (TLS 1.2+) and at rest. Keys are managed in AWS KMS. |
| Patient links | Assessment links are signed (HMAC-SHA256) and time-limited. They expire, and expired links are visibly dead — never silently reusable. |
| Model isolation | No personally identifying information is sent to model providers. Extraction and reasoning operate on de-identified clinical content. |
| Access control | Role-based access. Booking staff, nurses and anaesthetists each see what their role requires — nothing more. |
| Audit & tracing | Org-wide and per-patient audit logs, with full workflow tracing on every analysis. Exportable for governance committees and accreditation. |
| Deterministic rules | Safety-critical screening rules are versioned and testable. Every output records the rule version that produced it. |
| Privacy framework | Pathways operates under the Australian Privacy Principles. Privacy impact documentation is available for procurement review. |
| Authentication | Multi-factor authentication on every account. SSO via SAML or OIDC against your own identity provider is available from the Business tier. |
| ISO 27001 | Certification is in progress. It covers the organisation rather than a plan tier — it is not something a customer buys more of by moving up a tier. |
| Independent testing | Penetration test reports and security questionnaire support are available to Enterprise customers for governance and procurement review. |
The authoritative version of the security controls is the security page; commercial terms are on the pricing page.
Who it is for
| Public Hospital | Pathways gives public hospitals a pre-admission service that triages elective patients by risk rather than clinic availability. Every booked patient receives a voice assessment by SMS, the risk engine profiles each case against perioperative guidelines, and the anaesthetist receives a generated review list of red-flagged patients only. |
|---|---|
| Private Hospital | Pathways reduces day-of-surgery cancellations in private hospitals by screening every booked patient at the time of booking rather than on the morning of surgery. The classic late-cancellation causes — poor glycaemic control, unwithheld SGLT2 inhibitors, undiagnosed sleep apnoea — surface weeks ahead, while the list can still be optimised or backfilled. |
| Consulting Anaesthetist | Pathways gives a consulting anaesthetist a completed patient history before the pre-operative phone call. The patient is interviewed by voice from home, medications are photographed and verified, and a guideline-backed risk profile is waiting — turning a twenty-five minute assembly job into a five-minute confirmation, with a timestamped record of every assessment. |
What Pathways is not
These limits are as much a part of an accurate description as the capabilities, and they are the ones most often lost when software of this kind is summarised. Pathways is clinical decision support, and it does not replace the pre-admission clinic — it decides who should be in one.
| Not a diagnostic tool | Pathways screens for perioperative risk and produces recommendations for review. It does not diagnose. |
|---|---|
| Issues no orders | It places no orders and clears no patients. Outputs are recommendations, never directives. |
| Not autonomous | Clinician-in-the-loop by design. Every recommendation is reviewable and auditable, and a qualified clinician decides. |
| Does not replace the pre-admission clinic | It decides who should be in the clinic. The clinic keeps doing the same work for a better-chosen set of patients. |
| Not a substitute for clinical judgement | It assists — it never replaces — the judgement of qualified clinicians. |
| Scope is pre-operative | Perioperative assessment is the live setting. Pathways does not currently operate in emergency or general practice settings. |
Pathways is a clinical decision support tool. It assists — it never replaces — the judgement of qualified clinicians.
Common questions
Answers below are extracts. The full versions, with elaboration, are on the FAQ page.
- Where is Pathways patient data stored?
- All Pathways patient data is stored in AWS Sydney (ap-southeast-2). Patient information is not transferred outside Australia in storage, processing or backup. Data is encrypted in transit using TLS 1.2 or above and at rest with keys managed in AWS KMS.
- Does Pathways send patient data to AI model providers?
- No. No personally identifying information is sent to model providers. Extraction and reasoning operate on de-identified clinical content, and patient information is never used to train models. The safety-critical screening rules are deterministic code rather than model output, so they do not involve a model provider at all.
- How does Pathways reduce day-of-surgery cancellations?
- Pathways screens every patient at the moment of booking rather than at the pre-admission clinic, so the findings that cause cancellations — unwithheld SGLT2 inhibitors, poor glycaemic control, undiagnosed sleep apnoea, missing discharge support — surface weeks ahead, while the list can still be optimised, rescheduled or backfilled.
- What is Socrates Pre-Op?
- Socrates Pre-Op is the Pathways voice agent that takes a structured anaesthetic history from a patient by phone. It is delivered as a secure, time-limited SMS link — no app, no login, no paper questionnaire — and covers 12 clinical domains conversationally, producing structured, severity-tagged findings that feed the risk engine directly.
- Do patients know they are speaking to an AI?
- Yes. The interview opens by identifying Pathways as an automated assistant working on behalf of your practice or hospital, and tells the patient that a clinician will review everything discussed. Patients can ask to speak to a person at any point rather than continue with the assessment.
- Which clinical domains does the Pathways interview cover?
- The Socrates Pre-Op interview covers 12 domains — surgical context, presenting symptoms, prior anaesthetics, systems review, functional capacity and frailty, airway assessment, medications and allergies, social and risk factors, implanted devices, pre-op investigations, a red-flag screen, and safety and shared decisions.
- Does Pathways need to integrate with our PMS or EMR?
- No. Pathways runs standalone from day one. The SMS-driven workflow needs no patient management or EMR integration to start, so a service can screen its next elective list without an IT project, an interface engine, or a change window. Integration is available later but is not a precondition.
- How long does it take to deploy Pathways?
- Days rather than quarters. Because Pathways runs standalone over SMS with no PMS or EMR integration required, a service can begin sending assessments on its next elective list. There is nothing for patients to install and no software to deploy on hospital workstations — the platform runs in a browser.
- How much does Pathways cost?
- Pathways has three tiers. Consultant is $125 per clinician per month excluding GST, or $1,250 a year billed annually, for anaesthetists running their own lists. Business and Enterprise are quoted per site or by procedure volume. There is no per-patient charge and no setup fee for a standalone deployment.
- How is the Business tier priced?
- Per site or by procedure volume, so the figure tracks the size of your pre-admission workload rather than a seat count. A short scoping conversation about your lists produces a fixed annual figure. Business is an annual agreement, invoiced yearly in advance.
- Is there a discount for paying annually?
- Yes. On the Consultant tier, paying annually gives you two months free — $1,250 per clinician per year instead of $1,500, excluding GST. That works out at $104 per clinician per month. Annual agreements are standard at Business and Enterprise.
- Is Pathways a medical device, and who is responsible for clinical decisions?
- Pathways is clinical decision support intended for use by qualified clinicians within Australian clinical governance frameworks. It is clinician-in-the-loop by design — it issues no automated orders, and every recommendation is reviewable and auditable. The treating clinician remains solely responsible for all clinical decisions.
- How does Pathways generate its risk flags?
- Pathways screens each case with deterministic, versioned rules referenced to perioperative guidelines. Every flag carries a severity tier, the clinical rationale, the triggering evidence, the guideline reference and a recommended action, plus the rule version that produced it. The same inputs always produce the same flags, months later.
- Can we audit why a patient was cleared or flagged?
- Yes. Pathways keeps org-wide and per-patient audit logs with full workflow tracing on every risk analysis — the inputs used, the rule version that fired, the output produced, and the human who reviewed it, all timestamped. Logs are exportable for governance committees, M&M review and accreditation.
- What happens to patients who are not high risk?
- They proceed. Every completed profile carries a triage recommendation — anaesthetist review, pre-admission clinic, telephone review, or no further assessment — so clinic slots go to moderate-risk patients and anaesthetist time goes to red flags. Low-risk patients are not routed into a clinic appointment they do not need.
- Do patients need to download an app?
- No. Patients receive a signed, time-limited SMS link and complete the assessment in their phone's browser. There is no app, no login and no password. Links expire, and expired links are visibly dead rather than silently reusable.
- What happens if a patient doesn't complete their assessment?
- The tracker shows exactly where they stopped — sent, opened, part-way through, or expired — and automated reminders go out without anyone chasing. A link can be resent in one click. Because the status is visible per patient rather than inferred from silence, an incomplete assessment becomes a task on a list instead of a discovery on the day of surgery.
- What if a patient has no smartphone, or can't use one?
- They are identified as a group rather than missed. The assessment needs only a phone that receives SMS and opens a link — no app, no login, no account. Patients who cannot complete it that way show as incomplete on the tracker, so the service can route them to a telephone assessment or a clinic slot deliberately instead of discovering the gap later.
- Who inside our organisation can see patient data?
- Access is role-based. Booking staff, nurses and anaesthetists each see what their role requires and nothing more, and every view and action is written to the audit log. Access is scoped to your organisation — Pathways staff do not browse patient records, and there is no shared or cross-organisation view.
- How long does the assessment take a patient?
- Most of a Socrates Pre-Op interview is conversational rather than form-filling, and patients complete it from home in their own time rather than in a clinic slot. It can be paused and resumed, and photographing medications happens during the conversation rather than as separate homework. Duration varies with how complex the patient's history is.
- Does Pathways replace the pre-admission clinic?
- No. It decides who should be in it. Every completed profile carries a triage recommendation — anaesthetist review, pre-admission clinic, telephone review, or no further assessment — so clinic slots go to the patients who need them. The clinic keeps doing the same work, for a different and better-chosen set of patients.
- What happens when Pathways is uncertain about something?
- It says so, on the profile. Extraction confidence is shown rather than hidden, anything uncertain is flagged for human review, and missing investigations and unconfirmed timings are listed explicitly. A profile that has not been told about an outstanding echocardiogram is not presented as a clean profile — the gap is part of the output.
- Can we run a pilot before committing?
- Yes, and it is the usual way to start. Because Pathways runs standalone over SMS with no integration required, a pilot can be a single upcoming list or a single surgeon's patients rather than a whole-of-service programme. That makes the question answerable in weeks with real patients instead of in a demo environment.
- What happens to our data if we stop using Pathways?
- It is yours and it is exportable. Org-wide and per-patient audit logs and assessment records can be exported for your own systems and record-keeping obligations. Retention follows the treating provider's obligations and applicable health records legislation, and the specifics are set out in your services agreement.
Terminology
Pathways maintains a glossary of 18 perioperative terms —
ASA physical status, STOP-Bang, functional capacity in METs, frailty,
SGLT2 inhibitors before surgery and others. Each is defined at
/glossary, and each definition page is
available as plain markdown by appending .md to its URL.
Canonical sources
Where a claim on this page and a claim elsewhere on the site disagree, the specific page is correct and this one is stale.
- The platform — what the product does, in detail
- Security — data handling and governance
- Pricing — how it is quoted
- FAQ — 24 questions, answered in full
- Glossary — 18 defined terms
- Insights — long-form writing on perioperative operations
- Privacy policy and terms of service
Machine-readable equivalents: /llms.txt indexes
the site, /llms-full.txt contains its full
text, and appending .md to any page URL returns that page as
markdown — this one is at https://getpathways.ai/ai-info.md.
Corrections: hello@getpathways.ai.
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