Our story is deeply rooted in the needs of healthcare professionals.
Since 2004, Best Practice Software has grown from a regional health IT start-up into a trusted partner for over 6,000 healthcare clinics across Australia and New Zealand. With growing product sales, engaged users, and countless patients supported through our solutions, we remain proudly committed to our founding principles: creating technology by healthcare professionals, for healthcare professionals.
Our Culture and Values
Built on a foundation of integrity, collaboration and customer focus, our culture celebrates innovation and inclusivity every step of the way. These values inspire not only what we create but how we work together.
Best Practice Software began with a vision.
Dr Frank Pyefinch, a busy GP in Bundaberg, Queensland, saw an opportunity to harness technology at the very frontline of primary care. With support from his wife Lorraine, a registered nurse and future regional mayor, he transformed a simple program into a powerful medical software solution – designed by healthcare professionals, for healthcare professionals.
A Big Idea Takes Root
In the early 1990s, Dr Pyefinch balanced his time as a busy General Practitioner in Bundaberg, Queensland with learning basic software programming. At first, Frank’s database programs measured and analysed basic statistics. Over time, they would be designed and coded to suit a medical practitioner to save time and enhance patient safety and practice efficiencies for script writing. After all, a key focus of Frank’s revolutionary innovation was to reduce the potential risks of prescribing from handwritten doctor notes. The early foundations of a medical software application were born, in regional Australia, designed and developed by a General Practitioner for General Practitioners.
Frank’s exciting ideas on medical software – and the very early iteration he wrote – would soon be shared and celebrated within the Australian GP community. In today’s terms we’d call Frank “a medical futurist”, but in the early 90s he was simply working to enhance General Practice, and make life simpler and more effective, “from the inside out”.
Growing Momentum
His early program was commercialised with great success – propelled to 90% market share of Australian GP desktops –, and involved long trips away from home to visit GPs – at conferences or in their practice – to showcase the benefits of using a computer to help manage the patient record. There were early integrations with the MIMS drug database, providing GPs with a leading edge in handling more work, instantly and seamlessly, at their desktop.
In 2002, Frank exited that business and concentrated on his tireless work within General Practice, and he and Lorraine focussed their time and efforts on raising a beautiful young family. Lorraine would eventually go on to be a popular local government Councillor and then Mayor of the inaugural Bundaberg Regional Council, helping to support significant regional development projects that would shape a newly merged region. Frank kept in close touch with medical colleagues throughout the country, growing and adapting his unique outlook on medical technology in response to their feedback and ideas, giving them the tools to not only survive but thrive in the changing healthcare environment of the early-to-mid 2000s.
Market Leadership
In 2004, Frank and Lorraine started Best Practice Software, putting their minds together to building a brand-new medical software program that would harness the support and enthusiasm of a national cohort of GPs, eager for new features and technologies. Passionate about improving and enhancing the doctor’s desktop experience and launching new and innovative ideas in e-health technology. A new program was born and Bp Premier (then just titled “Best Practice”) attracted great attraction and interest from Australian GPs, and Darwin’s theory of evolution was a metaphor and inspiration for the development of Best Practice.
During the decade that Best Practice Software grew to become market leader, the company proudly stood by its guiding principles. The finches of the Galapagos pointed Darwin to the theory of evolution. The soaring finch logo remains as Dr Frank Pyefinch’s personal guarantee that Best Practice Software will continue to evolve in response to the needs of the Australasian medical community.
New Horizons
Today, Best Practice is a leader in the development, marketing, and support of quality medical software products for Australasian medical practice. The company operates across Australia and New Zealand, employing brilliant minds and creative souls who shape a new generation of products. A private company driven by engagement with its users, Best Practice has remained true to its founding principles of supporting doctors and other allied health and medical professionals, evolving to meet the changing needs within Australasian healthcare. All by keeping in touch with our users.
This policy has earned the company a reputation in the market for quality products, excellent customer service, and authentic user engagement. It has also helped Best Practice experience exponential growth over its lifetime, culminating in the opening of purpose-built national headquarters in its hometown, now one of the most sophisticated “nerve centres” dedicated to medical information technology in the nation. This resource of expertise has allowed Best Practice to acquire two additional respected software companies operating in Australia and New Zealand, broadening the customer base to include Specialists and Allied Health Professionals.
Looking to the Future
Today, Dr and Mrs Pyefinch remain closely connected with the strategic direction, compliance, and oversight of our business through our Board of Directors. They work with our Chief Executive and team by understanding first-hand the challenges and needs of the medical community from software and technology, and they are wholly committed to overseeing Best Practice’s continued success and support of our medical community.
We like to think of Frank as the closest thing we have to a founder of Australian digital GP medicine. His unique story and brilliant ideas have helped us embrace digital health connections that have forever changed the e-health landscape.
