Best Practice Software Leads $5.4m investment in Medcast to Advance Australian-Built Clinical AI and Strengthen National Healthcare

Best Practice Software (Best Practice) and Medcast today announced a major step forward in their long-standing collaboration, supported by a lead investment from Best Practice as part of Medcast’s $5.4 million capital raise. This investment will accelerate Medcast’s development of governed clinical knowledge solutions and expand MedLuma – Medcast’s AI-enabled clinical knowledge platform designed for Australian healthcare.

Best Practice Software is Australia’s leading provider of clinical and practice management software, used by thousands of clinicians nationwide. Medcast is a respected Australian organisation known for delivering trusted clinical education, continuing professional development (CPD) programs, and governed clinical guidance.

The two organisations bring complementary strengths in clinical software, education, governance, and digital health innovation. Together, they will advance access to trusted Australian clinical guidance, support CPD and education pathways, and enhance digital health capability in primary care.

The investment will support Medcast’s expansion of MedLuma, enabling deeper integrations with clinical software and scaling its technology and clinical teams. MedLuma helps clinicians navigate the rapidly expanding volume of clinical information and access trusted, relevant evidence at the point of care. The platform provides evidence-based answers grounded in Australian guidelines and clinical sources, with transparent citations linking back to the original material.

Best Practice Software CEO Craig Hodges said the collaboration reflects the strategic importance of trusted, locally governed clinical knowledge to the future of Australian healthcare.

“AI has enormous potential to support clinicians by bringing trusted knowledge into the workflow, but it will always complement – not replace – the clinical judgment, experience and patient-centred decision-making that define high-quality care. Tools like MedLuma strengthen clinicians by giving them faster access to evidence, while ensuring the clinician remains at the centre of every patient interaction.”

“Our lead investment in Medcast reflects our confidence in the team, the MedLuma platform and the opportunity to build technology purpose-designed for Australian healthcare. Through Best Practice Software, we also have the opportunity to bring this innovation into clinicians’ existing workflows at scale.”

A core principle in MedLuma’s development is respecting the intellectual property and authorship of organisations that produce the clinical guidance on which Australian healthcare depends. Medcast works directly with copyright holders to ensure publishers retain ownership of their intellectual property and are acknowledged within the platform.

Medcast founder and CEO Dr Stephen Barnett said the investment will allow Medcast to scale MedLuma while maintaining its focus on clinical quality, transparency and trust.

“Medcast is proud to deepen our partnership with Best Practice. Together, we can expand access to trusted clinical guidance and education for clinicians across Australia. This collaboration allows us to combine our strengths and deliver tools that genuinely support safer care.”

“AI has enormous potential to improve healthcare by bringing the right information into the right context. But in clinical care, speed and convenience are not enough. Clinicians need information they can trust, grounded in evidence and Australian practice. Solving this ‘last mile’ of medical-grade AI is the hard problem we are tackling,” Dr Barnett said.

“MedLuma is built around trust and safety, combining technical and human-in-the-loop validation with a clinician-led, Australian approach and sovereign capability that keeps Australian health data onshore. We also respect the intellectual property behind clinical knowledge, working with guideline providers and seeking permission to use their content rather than assuming accessible information is automatically available to power AI.”

“This investment marks an important new chapter for Medcast. It gives us the capacity to accelerate MedLuma’s development, deepen its integration into clinical workflows and make trusted knowledge easier to access for healthcare professionals across Australia. Our vision is to accelerate knowledge into practice, unlocking better care at every step of the patient journey.”

The investment will see MedLuma being integrated with Best Practice Software, an important step in bringing clinical knowledge and professional learning closer to the systems clinicians already use every day.

Medcast co-founder and Chief Product Officer Justin Lewis said the next phase of healthcare technology will be defined not simply by access to artificial intelligence, but by the quality, provenance and governance of the knowledge underpinning it.

“AI-powered search is becoming increasingly easy to build. Medical-grade AI that clinicians can interrogate and trust is much harder,” Lewis said.

“The opportunity for MedLuma is to create a trusted intelligence layer for Australian healthcare, bringing the right clinical knowledge into the flow of care,” Lewis said.

“It combines Australian-relevant evidence with transparent sourcing and responsible use of the intellectual property that underpins it.”

Founded in 2013, Medcast has provided independent clinical education and professional development to more than 100,000 registered healthcare professionals. Its experience in medical education, knowledge translation and clinical practice underpins MedLuma’s approach to AI.

MedLuma launched in early 2026 with an initial focus on Australian general practice, where clinicians are managing increasingly complex patient needs, a rapidly expanding body of medical knowledge and significant time pressure. The platform is designed to reduce the time spent searching across fragmented information sources while helping practitioners remain aligned with current evidence and Australian clinical standards.

Dr Barnett said Medcast’s ambition was to ensure Australia played a leading role in determining how AI was responsibly introduced into frontline healthcare.

“There is a narrow window in which the foundations for clinical AI are being established,” he said.

“We believe Australia needs locally built technology grounded in Australian evidence, standards and models of care. This investment gives us the opportunity to build that capability here and ensure trusted, responsibly sourced information remains at the heart of patient care.”

For more information and interview requests with Dr Stephen Barnett: Luke Robinson / 0417548688 / luke@storydisco.com.au


About Medcast
Medcast is an Australian healthcare education and clinical knowledge company supporting healthcare professionals with evidence-based education, professional development and clinical resources. Through MedLuma, Medcast is building an AI-enabled clinical knowledge and learning platform designed around the needs of Australian healthcare professionals. To learn more visit medluma.ai

About Best Practice
Best Practice Software (Best Practice) is an Australian-owned health technology company and Australia’s leading clinical information system, supporting thousands of practices and clinicians nationwide. From its beginnings in Bundaberg, Queensland to a network of offices across Australia, it has held to a founding principle: building clinical software designed around the way healthcare professionals actually work. Supporting digital health innovation and the future of Australia’s healthcare workforce remain central to that commitment. To learn more visit bestpracticesoftware.com