When Healthdirect becomes 1800 Medicare on 1 January 2026, public awareness and a trusted voice in a ‘wild west’ environment is hopefully the result.
The rebranding of Healthdirect to 1800 Medicare is not just about lifting public awareness of the service but also building trust in an environment likened to the “wild West”, says CEO Bettina McMahon.
Speaking at the AIDH’s HIC2025 conference in Melbourne this week, Ms McMahon said the rise of single-issue telehealth operators had heightened Healthdirect’s mission to provide evidence-based advice and care.
“The opportunity to scale through virtual care and video is something that we promote very much, but in terms of alternate areas of either advice or treatment, the accessibility that people have to information on the internet is seeing a rise in these forms of advice,” she said.
“It’s something that that Healthdirect is looking at very seriously.
“How can we provide advice that is evidence-based, that is in line with guidance from the AMA, the RACGP and other professions, so that when consumers come to us – and they come to us in the millions – how can we assess their symptoms, address their questions and push them into pathways that are evidence-based?
“That’s where Healthdirect comes in.”
A lot of Australians are currently getting their medical advice from social media, influencers, or from offshore advice.
“How can we actually push them into evidence-based care?” said Ms McMahon.
“How can we inhale the increasing demand of people for either wellness advice or making small changes they can to improve their health before they even touch the health system.
“And if we think it’s appropriate for them to touch the health system, what is the best place for them to go first to get the advice they need?”
Winning public trust was a “massive issue” for many in the after-hours telehealth space, said Ms McMahon.
“It’s about quality advice that is evidence-based, so let’s assume that’s a given, but then it’s the connection and the relatedness, and how people can fee that the advice we’re providing is personalised and speaks to them,” she said.
The rebranding of Healthdirect to 1800 Medicare on 1 January 2026 was part of that process.
“This is behind the policy of 1800 Medicare, because not all Australians know about Healthdirect,” said Ms McMahon.
“We did some modelling where we looked at different communities and who is using us and who is missing out. And we found that in New South Wales, the local government area using their Healthdirect services twice as much as the state median was an area where over 70% of the community were born in Australia.
“The LGA which is using us the least is where less than 30% were people born in Australia.”
That, said Ms McMahon was an example of the inverse care law – those who need the care most, get the least.
That’s where the Medicare brand comes in.
“Part of the intention behind 1800 Medicare is to promote Healthdirect, so that people who don’t know that this is a service available to them, can get to us,” she said.
Like all businesses which rely, for a large part, on their ability to get to the top of the Google search algorithm – which imparts a public perception of trustworthiness – Healthdirect is also grappling with the changes the search engine has made, namely, the introduction of an AI summary at the top of every search result page.
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“We’ve invested a lot of time and effort and expertise in search engine optimisation,” said Ms McMahon.
“There are all these ways you can bump yourself up, but that’s all out the window now with the AI agents that bring you a summary.
“Everyone is now thinking about, how do you get there? That’s a work in progress, and it’s something we’re all grappling with at the moment.”
Dr Simon Kos, Microsoft ANZ’s chief medical officer, said the change made by Google was symptomatic of “our evolving society”.
“Big tech needs to have responsibility and accountability,” he told conference delegates.
“I don’t think it solely sits with the technology sector and I don’t think it sits with government and regulation. This is our evolving society.
“How do we develop the appropriate critical analysis about what we’re being fed in the modern age, when we do have these things like deepfakes – it goes well beyond search algorithms.
“That was an artefact of technology at a point in time where you would go to the internet and you would ask it a keyword, and it would give you a big [list of results], and then from those you would filter what you needed.
“Now increasingly, we’re posing the question and getting the answer back. That’s very different, because I think when you get that answer, you need to have that critical acumen to say, ‘where are the sources of that information coming from, how do I check them, how do I verify that?’.
“And when the algorithms are very good, it leads to a complacency bias, where eventually you are not doing the appropriate due diligence to check those answers.
“I think we’re just going to have to up level ourselves so that we maintain that level of scepticism in an increasingly digital society, because it’s changed once, it’s going to continue to change more.”
HIC2025 was held in Melbourne on 18, 19 and 20 August.
