In December 2018, Australian-based allied health practice management system Cliniko released a software update that enabled the recording of not just sex, but gender identity and pronouns, as well.

Cliniko is the first (and remains the only) allied health practice management software to include the ability to document this.

Cliniko founder, Joel Friedlaender, states that, “This particular change is not just because it's important to many customers, but also because it's important to us and it's important to patients/clients of our customers.”

By Friedlaender’s own admission, “Unfortunately, we’ve handled this very poorly until now.

In making the changes you see today, we’ve now done the research we should have done long ago. We’re happy to properly empower our Cliniko users and ultimately their patients/clients to handle this with the sensitivity and accuracy it deserves. Asking someone about their gender identity is a very personal question and is rarely required.

We expect a large portion of Cliniko users will not need this, however for those that do, it’s very important.”

For quite some time, the Cliniko team knew that this needed to change—but it had to be done right. The solution wasn’t an easy one, either. Cliniko previously had a field called “Gender”, but it was treated as “Sex”.

The options to choose from were simply Male, Female, and Not Applicable. Friedlaender acknowledges that this was a mistake, and one that had been around for far too long (since February 2011, five months before Cliniko was launched).

It took months of research and conversation, but as 2018 came to a close, the Cliniko team was proud to offer several new fields: Sex, Gender Identity, and Pronouns.

As Friedlaender states, “When setting a patient’s pronouns, you’ll find options for common pronouns and the ability to provide custom text to allow for any preferred pronouns.

Whenpronouns are set for a patient, they are shown on the patient’s detail page and on the appointment pop up. On both the patient form and details page, there are a set of example sentences to help demonstrate how the pronouns are used.”