POLAR stands for Population Level Analysis & Reporting. POLAR software is useful for insight and planning across the areas of clinical, business, quality improvement and accreditation for general practice.

It enables meaningful analysis by general practices of their own identified patient data, which is presented in an easy-to-use graphical format.

SEMPHN provides POLAR software at no cost (100% subsidised) for general practices of all sizes within the SEMPHN catchment.

About POLAR

  • Why use POLAR?

    POLAR is useful for insight and planning across clinical and business and accreditation for general practices of all sizes.

    POLAR allows your general practice to:

    • Access and review patient cohorts
    • Undertake quality improvement and data cleansing
    • Improve planning capabilities including internal service needs and health campaigns and patient education
    • Inform patient-centred care and improve patient health outcomes
    • Identify “at-risk” patients on a range of clinical indicators 
    • Replace “out of license” data analysis software

  • Does the RACGP support analysing patient data to improve patient care?

    Yes. In their advice on using data for better health outcomes the RACGP says “using data to understand population health helps paint a picture of the overall wellbeing of a community. Data can highlight differences in health status between social groups and can help determine what approaches need to be prioritised. With advances in technology, general practices are able to capture and analyse health data more efficiently and without additional costs.”

  • Who can use POLAR?

    POLAR is suitable for use by all general practice staff, including practice principals, general practitioners, nurses, practice managers, business managers and admin staff.

  • How does POLAR work?

    POLAR performs a data collection (extracts changed data) from the practice software every five minutes. The de-identified practice data is encrypted using industry endorsed algorithms similar as those used in the health, banking and e-commerce sectors. The encrypted identified data is stored locally with the POLAR software.

    The encrypted de-identified data is uploaded directly to the POLAR data warehouse (located in Melbourne). Overnight the accumulated de-identified data is built into POLAR Reports and made available for the viewing by the practice the following morning. When POLAR is opened at the practice the locally stored identified data and the de-identified data drawn from the POLAR Data Warehouse are unencrypted locally and matched enabling reports to be viewed and analysed.

  • Who supports POLAR?

    Support for POLAR is provided by Outcome Health.

  • What benefits does POLAR provide SEMPHN?

    SEMPHN can use de-identified and aggregated POLAR data to improve population health planning across our SEMPHN catchment. SEMPHN catchment includes the local government areas (LGAs) of Bayside, Cardinia, Casey, Frankston, Glen Eira, Greater Dandenong, Kingston, Mornington Peninsula, Port Philip and Stonnington.

    POLAR allows us to:

    • Work more closely with and better understand general practice
    • Identify community health care needs
    • Design better health care services
    • Make evidence-based decisions on resource allocations, such as education and training, workshops and seminars, and small grants to incentivise identified service needs
    • Feed back to general practices about identified activity and gaps

Data analysis: Ask questions and get answers

Data analysis is all about asking questions and finding answers.

POLAR is as open as possible in its structure, aiming to help you find answers to questions specific to your general practice. POLAR makes your routine data analysis straight forward, simple, and useful.

Example: Ask POLAR, "how many of my regular patients, who have a current diagnosis of diabetes, and have not had a care plan in the last 12 months"?

You can analyse your data to identify gaps in patient care, allocate resources and clinicians accordingly, and build on your clinical strengths including in the areas of quality improvement and safety.

Would you like to see more?

Contact the Provider Support Team at providersupport@semphn.org.au or directly call on 03 8514 4460 to book a demonstration.

Contact us

Getting set up with POLAR

  • Sign up documentation

    Below are documents and instructions for participating practices to download, read and complete in order to get set up with POLAR software. 

    Step 1: Download and read the Data Security and Privacy document. Call us if you have any questions (03 8514 4460).

    Step 2: Download, print, complete and scan the Data Sharing & Licensing Agreement.

    Step 3: Download and complete the POLAR Technical Requirements Checklist. This helps us with your POLAR installation. If you need assistance, get in touch with your ICT provider.

    Step 4: Attach your completed documents from Step 2 and Step 3 and email polar@semphn.org.au.

    Step 5: Download, print and display A3 GP Poster (option 1 for reception area) or A3 GP Poster (option 2 for reception area) in your reception area. If you’d like a printed version, request copies by calling us on 03 8514 4460.

  • Accounts & Logins

    POLAR access requires your practice users to have an individual user account. After returning the signed POLAR Data Sharing & Licensing Agreement, we create the user accounts.

    Your POLAR Administrator can setup and manage your POLAR user accounts for any staff member and allow or restrict access to revenue information in individual reports (polarexplorer.org.au). 

    For example, under the Clinic Summary report, the practice principal and practice manager can see MBS items and numbers and revenue, while nurses can be restricted to seeing MBS items and numbers only and not MBS revenue.

  • A guide to POLAR explorer

    View the guide to POLAR explorer.

Support

How do I receive support?

In late 2024, technical support of the POLAR platform transitioned from SEMPHN to Outcome Health - the creators and maintainers of the POLAR platform and associated applications. 

Outcome Health provides software support for POLAR issues, updates, advice, requests, remote training, and documentation. 

Please use the below options if you are experiencing technical issues or have platform related questions.

Knowledge Base Portal

Education, troubleshooting and ‘how to’ articles for all things POLAR.

Access here

POLAR Web Portal

The web portal allows you to log incidents, request for services and ask questions.  

Access here

Email Outcome Health

Email the Outcome Health POLAR Support team at servicedesk@polarexplorer.org.au. When the email is received, a ticket will be automatically created and triaged by the Outcome Health team. Please include as much detail as possible, including screenshots, report names, filters and patient IDs where applicable.  Note: Never include identifiable patient information.

Email here

Support FAQs

  • Will Outcome Health ever contact me?

    As part of the support service, Outcome Health will be maintaining the health of your POLAR setup. When things go wrong, and if they cannot be resolved remotely, they will get in touch with your practice directly either by email or by phone. 

  • How do I know it’s Outcome Health?

    Outcome Health will send an email to the practice admin before contacting the practice by telephone. If in doubt, please email servicedesk@polarexplorer.org.au to confirm whether the call is directed by their team. 


    Note: Outcome Health will never ask for your password or for any identifiable patient information, however, they may ask questions about the clinic as part of our verification process, including: 

    • Practice name 
    • Practice site ID 
    • Address 
    • Name of the practice administrator 

Walkthroughs and instructions

POLAR Walkthrough documents are short step-by-step guides designed to help you perform common and not so common patient data searches in POLAR (polarexplorer.org.au).

How to send a patient SMS broadcast

The POLAR Patient List may be uploaded to your 'online appointment' software for sending of customised broadcast SMS messages to your patients.

You will need to save your Patient List file as a .csv file extension (instead of .xlsx) using Excel (i.e.Patient List.xlsx to Patient List.csv).

The POLAR Patient List includes patient ID and mobile number from your practice software. The patient ID number allows you to customise the message with the patient's name and may automatically respect the patient's SMS opt-out preference.

  • Hot Doc instructions

    The following instructions will step you through uploading your Patient List.csv file to send patient SMS using Hot Doc:

    1. In POLAR, under Patient List menu, click 'Export to Excel' button to create your patient.xlsx file
    2. In Excel, open your file patients.xlsx and save as patients.csv
    3. Highlight and copy the BOLDED heading (below) according to your clinical software (without spaces): Best Practice = INTERNALID
      / Medical Director = PATIENT_ID / Zedmed = FILE_NUMBER
    4. In Excel, open your patients.csv file, edit Cell A1, delete ID heading and paste the BOLDED heading (e.g. for Medical Director copy and paste PATIENT_ID) - save and close the file. NOTE: DO NOT PASTE THE BOLDED HEADING OVER THE ID HEADING AS THE DATA MAY NOT IMPORT INTO HOT DOC
    5. Click and follow the Hot Doc: How to upload a CSV file instructions

  • HealthEngine instructions

    The following instructions will step you through uploading you Patient List.csv file to send patient SMS using HealthEngine: 

    1. In POLAR, under Patient List menu, click 'Export to Excel' button to create your patient.xlsx file
    2. In Excel, open your file patients.xlsx, delete all the columns except mobile number and save as patients.csv
    3. Go to HealthEngine and follow the How to upload a CSV file instructions

PDSA - Plan, Do, Study, Act guides

PDSA Guide - Missing Demographic data - Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander

PDSA Guide - Missing Demographic data - Age

PDSA Guide - Missing Demographic data - Emergency Contact

PDSA Guide - Missing Demographic data - Ethnicity

PDSA Guide - Missing Demographic data - Gender

PDSA Guide - Missing Demographic data - Next of Kin

PDSA Guide - Missing Demographic data - Post Code

PDSA Guide - Missing Demographic date - Suburb

PDSA Guide - Missing Clinical data - Social History & Family History

PDSA Guide - Missing Clinical data - Allergies, Allergy Reactions, Smoking, Alcohol, BMI

    Quality Improvement (QI)

    • What is data quality improvement?

      Data quality improvement (QI) means improving the quality of the data displayed in POLAR which is directly related to the quality of the data entered into your practice software.

    • How to benchmark and track QI

      The best option for benchmarking and tracking your practice's quality improvement over time is to copy (print screen keyboard button, or snipping software) and paste screenshots of your POLAR pages into Microsoft Word documents, and save these to a centralised network folder called POLAR.

      The walkthrough for Demographics and Clinical Metrics for Quality Improvement shows you how to manage benchmarking and tracking.

      Contact us if you would like assistance with your Quality Improvement benchmarking and tracking and Screenshots to Word.

      Practice Incentive Payments (PIP) Quality Improvement (QI) 

      SEMPHN’s Quality Improvement page has detailed information about the Practice Incentive Payments (PIP) Quality Improvement (QI) incentive requirements.


    Related services and resources

      View all services and resources