March 2nd, 2026
Monthly update
What's new in February
🚀 Introducing Advice & Guidance (A&G)
We’ve launched Advice & Guidance — a major new capability designed to strengthen collaboration between community optometry and hospital ophthalmology within Lutra Health.
What’s new
Optometrists can now submit Advice & Guidance requests directly within Lutra.
Ophthalmologists can review cases and provide structured clinical input in context.
Communication is secure, two-way, and fully recorded within the platform.
All Advice & Guidance interactions are linked to the relevant patient record for continuity and auditability.
Where appropriate, an Advice & Guidance request can progress directly to an accepted referral.
How it works
Submit a case – An optometrist creates an Advice & Guidance request, including relevant clinical details and supporting files.
Specialist review – An ophthalmologist reviews the case within Lutra and provides guidance or recommendations.
Clear outcome – The request may be resolved with advice, further information requested, or progressed to an accepted referral, depending on the clinical need.
Why we made this change
Timely collaboration between community and hospital teams is essential for delivering joined-up eye care.
Advice & Guidance enables faster access to specialist input, supports confident clinical decision-making, and allows patients to move seamlessly to referral where required — this marks an important step toward a more connected and streamlined eye care pathway.
✨ Streamlined patient registration
What’s new
The patient registration process has been simplified to focus on essential information at the point of creation.
Non-essential fields have been removed from the initial registration screen to make the process quicker.
All patient details can still be viewed and edited after registration.
Why we made this change
As part of our ongoing usability improvements, we’ve reduced unnecessary data entry during registration. This helps make the process faster and more focused, while keeping full flexibility to add or update information later.
📎 Simplified file uploads for cataract referrals and post-op
What’s new
For cataract referrals (Standard and Quick) and cataract post-op assessments, you can now upload multiple files at once.
File uploads for cataract cases no longer require manual tagging by eye or file type.
File upload behaviour for non-cataract referrals remains unchanged.
Why we made this change
Uploading and tagging files individually added unnecessary friction for cataract workflows.
This update simplifies the process by removing manual tagging and enabling multi-file upload, making it quicker and easier to submit supporting documents where detailed file categorisation isn’t required.