A clear printed guide
Two pages: the timeline on one, food, drinks and medicines on the other, with boxes for the patient's own times. For the fridge, the waiting room and anyone who prefers paper.
Open the example guide (PDF)Prep happens at the kitchen table. The cost lands on your list.
Your front desk answers the same prep questions all week. Nurses find out at admission. Proceduralists get a poor view and book a repeat. We turn your instructions into a printed guide, an audio guide, a short video and a personal planner that patients can follow, so fewer arrive unprepared and fewer ring to check.
Endoscopy list
Thu 14 · Room 2
- 7:00 ColonoscopyAte breakfast. Followed the afternoon schedule. Cancelled
- 7:45 Colonoscopy Ready
- 8:30 ColonoscopyLast dose too late. Poor view. Repeat
- 9:15 Gastroscopy Ready
- 9:45 Colonoscopy Ready
- 10:30 Colonoscopy Ready
Prep calls to reception this week
34
One unprepared patient, as your team lives it
Margaret is 68 and first on Thursday's list. Her handout is two pages of small print, and every word of it is correct. Here's who it reaches before she does.
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10:20 amMondayReception
"Can I have milk in my tea?"
It's the fourth prep call this morning, and each one runs ten minutes. The answer is in a table on page two, and the phone keeps ringing while your team reads it out.
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3:40 pmTuesdayPre-admission
A nurse rings through tomorrow's list to check prep.
Margaret's call goes to voicemail. The blood thinner advice she needed a week ago is the last paragraph on page one.
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9:15 pmWednesdayClinic closed
She has a question, and nobody to ask.
Two schedules sit a line apart, one for morning lists and one for afternoon. She follows the wrong one and hopes she has it right.
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7:05 amThursdayAdmission
"When did you take the second sachet?"
Your admitting nurse does the maths the handout asked Margaret to do at 2:30 am. It doesn't add up.
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7:20 amThursdayProcedure room
Cancel, or go ahead with a poor view?
Either way the proceduralist loses the slot or books a repeat, with less chance of finding what they were looking for.
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5:00 pmThursdayManagement
An empty slot on the day's report.
Theatre time, staff and specialist billings are already paid for. A $50 late fee recovers a fraction of it, and you may still get the complaint.
Nobody did anything wrong. The handout was written to be clinically accurate, and it's read at a kitchen table, tired and anxious. Your team spends the week making up the difference.
What changes for your team
Your instructions stay exactly as your clinicians wrote them. What changes is how patients receive them, and how often they come back to you with questions.
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Reception and admin
Send one link at booking, not a ten-minute briefing.
- Patients check the "can I eat this?" list instead of ringing you.
- Works from any booking system today: copy, paste, send.
- A printed guide for anyone who'd rather have paper.
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Nursing and pre-admission
Patients arrive knowing what they did, and when.
- Every step is a clock time from the patient's own admission time. No sums at 2:30 am.
- Medicine changes get their own day, not the last paragraph.
- Prep calls get shorter, because the patient has something to look at.
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Gastroenterologists and proceduralists
Better-prepped lists, on your regimen.
- We change how your instructions are shown, never what they say.
- Each specialist's regimen can have its own version, kept current.
- A pilot measures prep quality on the scale you already use.
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Practice, hospital and facility managers
Fewer lost slots, measured against your own numbers.
- A three-month pilot compares cancellations and prep calls with the three months before.
- Patient materials in your brand, accessible and dated for accreditation.
- No new system for staff to learn, and no patient data stored by default.
How many of your patients arrive unprepared?
Use your own numbers. Nothing you enter leaves this page unless you choose to send it to us.
Prep not done properly, the wrong food, or a missed medicine step. The Australian average for colonoscopy is about 7 in 100. Your best guess is fine.
arrive not ready. With clearer prep, 3 of them could be ready.
- Ready
- Arrives not ready
- Ready with clearer prep
Your clinic
Colonoscopies, or whichever procedure needs the most prep.
$
A cancelled or repeated slot, plus wasted staff and theatre time. An empty 30 to 45 minute endoscopy slot costs an Australian day surgery $1,200 to $2,500.
%
Studies of interactive prep apps and reminders suggest around 40% or more. A pilot measures your real figure.
Staff time on prep calls
$
%
Your estimate
Today, about 168 patients a year arrive unprepared. At $1,200 each, that's about $201,600 a year.
Could come back to you each year
$102,700
Fewer unprepared patients a year
67
Staff hours back a year
368
A typical pack pays for itself once it helps 9 patients a year prepare properly. At your numbers, that's about 1 in 19 of the patients who arrive unprepared today.
How this is worked out
Estimates only, from the numbers you entered. Dollar figures are rounded.
Where the starting numbers come from
The calculator starts at the conservative end of published Australian and international figures. Change any of them to match your clinic.
- About 7 in 100 colonoscopies in Australia have inadequate bowel prep, roughly 63,000 procedures a year.
- An empty 30 to 45 minute endoscopy slot costs an Australian day surgery $1,200 to $2,500 in facility fees, specialist billings and fixed staff costs. A typical $50 late cancellation fee recovers less than 5% of that.
- Inadequate prep means a repeat colonoscopy, usually within 12 months, which raises total costs by 60% to 257% (138% on average).
- Poor prep cuts polyp and adenoma detection by over 40%, raising the risk of missed lesions.
- Interactive apps and timed reminders lifted adequate prep from 84.2–93.5% to 91.0–98.2% in clinical studies.
- Interactive timelines and food checkers save an estimated 15 to 20 hours of nurse and admin time per 100 patients, mostly from fewer calls about diet and timing.
- Over 22% of Australians speak a language other than English at home, and the Colonoscopy Clinical Care Standard asks services to give patients prep instructions they can understand and to check that understanding.
Sources
- Bowel Cancer Australia and the Medical Journal of Australia (2024). Inadequate bowel preparation leading to poorer colonoscopies.
- Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care. Colonoscopy Clinical Care Standard (2025).
- Cancer Council Australia and GESA. Clinical practice guidelines for surveillance colonoscopy.
- Journal of Clinical Gastroenterology and PLOS ONE. Meta-analyses of digital health interventions, cost-effectiveness thresholds and interactive SMS reminders in colonoscopy prep.
One approved version. Every format your patients need.
Your team signs off one plain-language version of your instructions. Everything is built from it, so when a time changes, it changes everywhere.
Your instructions
Rewritten in plain language, every step tied to a day and a clock time. Signed off by your clinical lead, with a version date.
An audio companion guide
The printed guide, read aloud in a calm, natural voice. For patients with low vision or low literacy, and anyone who'd rather listen while they get on with it.
A short explainer video
Two to four minutes of clear motion graphics, with captions and a natural voiceover, for patients who'd rather watch than read. The example runs 3 minutes 43 seconds.
A personal planner
Each patient gets a link that opens to their own plan: every step as a clock time, a live countdown, a "can I eat this?" checker, drink trackers and reminders in their calendar. No app and no login.
Open the example plannerAdd what your patients need
- Your community's languages, translated and then checked by certified translators
- Easy Read
- Large print
- Auslan
- Sharing with a carer
The examples are for Tidewell Day Surgery, a fictional clinic. Your pack follows your instructions and your brand.
How it works
Three weeks from your handout to launch.
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Week 1
You send us your instructions
Your current handout in any form: a PDF, a Word file, a photo or a link. We rewrite it in plain language and flag anything unclear for your team to decide.
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Week 2
You review the first version in your brand
The printed guide, audio guide, video and planner, built for your clinic. Your team tells us what to change.
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Week 3
Sign-off, final versions and roll-out
Your clinical lead approves a dated version, we deliver the finals, and your staff start sending one link at booking.
More than one procedure?
Most clinics have prep instructions for several procedures, such as colonoscopy, gastroscopy and day surgery fasting. Send them together and we'll build them as one set: one brand, one review round and one sign-off for your team, with each extra procedure taking less time and costing less than starting it on its own.
- You stay in charge of the clinical content. We change how your instructions are shown, never what they say.
- No app and no login. Patients open a link on any phone.
- No patient data stored by default. Appointment times live in the patient's own link and on their phone.
- Accessible by design. Readable type, strong contrast and plain language, aiming for WCAG 2.2 AA from the first draft.
- Kept current. Every version is dated, and every format updates together when your instructions change.
Send us a handout. We'll send back a free review.
Within two business days, you'll get:
- A clarity score across ten checks, including the 2:30 am test: can a tired patient find the next step in ten seconds?
- The three changes that would help your patients most.
- One section of your handout, rebuilt, so you can see the difference.
It's yours to use, whether or not we work together. If it looks useful, we'll offer a 20-minute walkthrough of your instructions as a working planner.
Got it. Your review is on its way.
We've sent a confirmation to . Expect your review within two business days.
While you wait, open the example planner on your phone.
Then, if it helps: a three-month pilot
Start with one procedure. We measure against your own figures from the three months before, and agree what success looks like before anything goes live.
- On-the-day cancellations
- from poor prep, per 100 procedures
- Prep quality
- on the scale your proceduralists already use
- Prep calls
- about food, timing and medicines
- Patient confidence
- two quick questions at admission
- Reach
- links sent, opened, and opened again on prep days
Questions clinics ask
Will this add work for our staff?
Very little. Staff send one link at booking, from whatever system you use now, and hand over the printed guide to anyone who prefers paper. We do the writing, design, recording and updates. Your clinical lead reviews and signs off each version.
Do patients need to download an app?
No. Each patient gets a link by QR, SMS or Email that opens their plan in the phone's browser. There's nothing to install and no account to create.
Do you store patient information?
No. The appointment time travels in the patient's own link, and anything they tick off stays on their phone.
Who's responsible for the clinical content?
You are. We rewrite for clarity and flag anything ambiguous or contradictory, and your clinical lead signs off each dated version before it goes live. We never change what your instructions say.
What about patients without a smartphone?
The printed guide covers them, with boxes to fill in their own times, and the audio guide can be played from any device or a link the clinic shares.
Which procedures can you do?
We started with bowel prep for colonoscopy. The same approach suits gastroscopy, day surgery fasting, imaging with contrast, eye-drop schedules for cataract surgery, and procedures that need medicine changes beforehand.
Can links go out from our booking system?
Staff can send a personal link in seconds from any system today. Sending automatically from your booking or SMS platform is something we scope with you, system by system.
What happens when our instructions change?
Tell us what's changed. We update the approved version, your team signs it off, and the planner, guide, video captions and translations all update together with a new version date.
What does it cost?
It depends on the formats and languages you choose. Most clinics start with one procedure, and we quote after the free review, once we know what your handout needs.
Who's behind this?
Orbi Labs, a studio with 20+ years of experience making video, design and digital tools.