Kalix alternative for physio clinics

What Kalix is good at

An honest description

Kalix is an EMR, practice management and telehealth system for dietitians, nutritionists and healthcare professionals. It was co-founded by an Accredited Practising Dietitian in north-west Tasmania and a software developer, and grew out of her wish to document care in standardised nutrition terminology so outcomes could be tracked. Its site says it is used by hundreds of private practice allied health professionals in Australia and the United States, and emphasises group telehealth, online scheduling, billing and claims, charting templates and a client portal. Kalix publishes its prices, solo plans with unlimited staff and group plans by practice volume, in US dollars, with Australian customers charged in AUD plus GST.

Who tends to compare the two

A clinic comparing the two is usually an Australian dietitian or nutrition practice, or a small allied health clinic with dietetics in the mix, choosing between a system shaped around the nutrition care process by a dietitian and a free general system shaped around a physiotherapy clinic. Practices that document with standardised nutrition terminology and run group telehealth have clear reasons to prefer Kalix.

We do not run Kalix, so we will not tell you what it cannot do — the people who can answer that are Kalix and the clinic down the road who uses it. Everything below is only about us.

What Clinidiary does differently

Built in a clinic that is still running

Clinidiary is written inside a working physiotherapy practice in Adelaide and used on real patients every day. The diary in the screenshots is the one the practice runs on. That is not a slogan about authenticity — it is why a bug a physiotherapist hits on Monday tends to be fixed by Wednesday, because the person who wrote it has to use it on Thursday.

Third-party funding is ordinary work

DVA, workers compensation, NDIS and plan-managed billing sit in the same ledger as a private consultation rather than in a bolted-on module. A patient whose sessions are paid by three different parties is a normal Tuesday in an Australian clinic, and the software is shaped around that rather than surprised by it.

Free, and no card

The whole workspace, not a crippled tier, and no card. Refer a colleague and you earn points every time one joins, with no limit — they sit on your account and do not expire. No lock-in contract and no exit fee.

You can bring your patient list yourself

Export your patients from your current system and load the file in. The columns are read from the file's own headings, so it works whether the export says "First Name", "Firstname" or "Given Name" — and whether it came from a vendor or a spreadsheet somebody has kept by hand for nine years. Nothing is written until you have seen exactly what would happen.

Moving your patients across

You can do it yourself

Export your patient list from Kalix as a CSV and load it in Settings → Bring your data. The columns are read from the file's own headings, so you do not have to tell us what shape the export is in or rename anything first.

Nothing is written until you have seen it

The first pass only reads: it shows which columns were recognised, how many patients would be created, and who would be skipped because they are already here. You decide after seeing that, rather than before.

A date it cannot read, it refuses to guess

03/04/1980 is March in one country and April in another. Rather than pick, the import leaves that date blank and tells you the line number. A wrong date of birth decides concession eligibility and which of two same-named patients you have open.

Run both for a fortnight

We would rather you kept Kalix running alongside for the first couple of weeks than trusted a migration on anybody's word, including ours. See what moving involves.

Questions worth asking any vendor

How do I get my data out?

Ask before you sign up, not after. Ours is a CSV export of patients, appointments, notes and invoices, available to you without asking us and without a fee. If the answer involves a support ticket or a quote, that is the answer.

What happens to a note if my internet drops?

In Clinidiary it keeps saving locally and recovers when you come back. It is a dull question until the day it is the only question, which is usually the day somebody loses a consultation.

Can a paid invoice be edited?

Ours cannot. A correction is a credit note plus a replacement, and the original keeps its number and date. Convenient editing of paid invoices is a problem waiting for an audit.

Who is actually building it?

Two people, in a clinic that sees patients. That is a real limitation — we are smaller than everything else on this page — and it is also why the person who fixes a bug is the person who hit it.

Also worth looking at

If you are comparing properly, compare widely. These are the other systems clinics in Australia usually shortlist.

Clinidiary, if you are weighing it against Kalix