To address escalating obesity rates and fragmented care delivery, the Central Adelaide Local Health Network (CALHN) undertook a major service reform by amalgamating two previously siloed services at the Royal Adelaide Hospital and Queen Elizabeth Hospital. This integration led to the establishment of the CALHN Metabolic and Bariatric Clinic (CMBC) in 2025—a unified, nurse-led, multidisciplinary service combining endocrinology, surgery, dietetics, psychology, and exercise physiology.
A cornerstone of this transformation is OPTIMAP (Online Pathway from Triage to Individualised Metabolic Action Plan), a purpose-built digital platform that supports streamlined triage, automates documentation and pathology workflows, and delivers consumer education modules across domains such as nutrition, physical activity, sleep, mental health, and chronic disease management. OPTIMAP also enables an active waitlist model, fostering patient engagement and behavioural readiness before first clinical CMBC touch point, and facilitates real-time tracking of progress toward bariatric surgery eligibility.
This presentation will describe the co-design, implementation, and evaluation phases of both CMBC and OPTIMAP, including early outcomes in access, efficiency, and patient activation. It will also explore opportunities and challenges in scaling digitally enabled, team-based obesity care models across public health systems