Five Faces unveils digital hub for surgical patients

Five Faces has launched Patient Journey Support, a digital patient experience product for complex care pathways, starting with perioperative services.

Many surgical patients face fragmented communication and manual coordination from the time they join a waitlist through recovery. Patient Journey Support brings preparation, admission, and post-operative recovery into a single workflow aligned with hospital clinical and administrative processes.

The product provides milestones and reminders, procedure-specific information, and secure messaging with care teams. It also includes digital forms and consent, plus personalised recovery plans delivered through a single interface.

For hospital staff, it includes tools to track patient readiness and manage communications across teams. Dashboards are intended to reduce administrative work and improve visibility of theatre scheduling and utilisation.

Unified patient hub

At the centre of the product is what Five Faces calls a Unified Patient Hub. The Hub provides a single place for patients to manage appointments, information, tasks, and communications linked to their surgical journey.

Five Faces positions the Hub as a consistent digital layer that can operate as a standalone solution for surgical services or extend to other parts of a health service, such as outpatient care and diagnostics. This reflects a broader trend in hospital technology procurement, with providers increasingly seeking patient experience tools that span multiple services rather than point products for individual departments.

Five Faces already supplies digital tools used for outpatient appointments and check-in, with implementations for major Australian health providers and deployments outside Australia.

Configurable journeys

Five Faces is emphasising configurability as a differentiator. It says health services can design and adapt patient journeys without heavy reliance on the supplier, with options to configure at hospital level, by specialty, or to suit individual clinician requirements.

This flexibility can be important in perioperative care, where pre-admission testing, anaesthetic review, patient education, and follow-up vary by procedure and specialty. Health services also differ in how they allocate tasks between nurses, administrative staff, and surgical teams, which affects what information must be collected and when patients should receive prompts.

Five Faces says the goal is to support rollouts across departments and sites while keeping local control over content, milestones, and operational steps. Hospitals often struggle with digital patient communications that become difficult to maintain as workflows change. In surgery, changes can stem from updated clinical protocols, revised consent documentation, or operational shifts linked to bed capacity and theatre lists.

Nicole Nixon, Chief Executive Officer of Five Faces, said the launch reflects a move towards connected experiences that better match how patients experience care.

"Patients don't experience their care in separate systems," said Nicole Nixon, CEO, Five Faces. "Perioperative services are often among the most fragmented parts of a hospital. Rather than digitising small pieces in isolation, we've taken a holistic approach, connecting preparation, surgery and recovery in one Patient Hub, integrated with core systems. Because it's designed to scale, it can extend across other services over time. It's about clarity for patients and better coordination for teams."

Clinical leadership

The product is led by Dr Cory Williams, Research and Clinical Lead at Five Faces. Five Faces says Williams has more than a decade of experience in surgical and perioperative services across Australia's public health system.

Williams said the product responds to rising demand for surgery and the operational strain that can follow when patients are not fully prepared or when information is incomplete close to admission. Missed pre-operative steps can lead to cancellations, delays, or increased risk, particularly in complex cases involving multiple clinicians and services.

"If we want surgical services to keep pace with demand, we need more than short-term fixes like stretching operating hours," said Williams. "We need more fundamental support for how care is coordinated: clearer communication, better preparation, and visibility for teams. This isn't about digitising paperwork. It's about designing a better way for patients and clinicians to stay connected through complex care."

Five Faces says Patient Journey Support can extend beyond perioperative care to other complex services, including multi-stage treatments and chronic disease programs. It says the Unified Patient Hub model provides a consistent foundation for extending patient communications, tasks, and education into additional pathways as health services broaden digital patient support.

Clients named by Five Faces include Alfred Health, NSW Health, Peninsula Health, and King's College Hospital London in Dubai. The company says it has received joint digital health innovation awards with healthcare clients, including the NSW Government Premier's Award and a 2025 Queensland iAward from the Australian Information Industry Association.