For psychologists
Practice software for South African psychologists
A psychology practice generates very little paperwork and a great deal of sensitive narrative. The software problem is not volume — it is confidentiality, continuity and getting a session authorised without breaking either.
Or talk to us first- POPIA & HPCSA aligned
- We take medical aids
- Built by practising clinicians
HPCSA board
Psychology
In short
iScript.live is a South African practice platform for psychologists that holds session records, treatment plans, outcome measures and consent in one confidential clinical record, with telehealth and real-time medical-scheme claim switching attached. Scheme session limits and authorisation are tracked against the patient rather than counted by hand, and access to the narrative record is restricted by role with an immutable audit trail on every read.
iScript.live is a multi-tenant, AI-native healthcare practice platform built in South Africa by Lighthouse iScript (Pty) Ltd. This page is about what iScript.live does for psychologists practising in South Africa. Psychologists in South Africa are regulated by the Health Professions Council of South Africa under the Health Professions Act 56 of 1974, through its Professional Board for Psychology.
A psychologist assesses and treats psychological and behavioural difficulty through structured assessment and talking therapy, usually over a series of sessions with the same client. Psychology is the discipline where the record is at its most sensitive and where the therapeutic relationship, rather than a procedure, is the intervention.
This page covers what iScript.live does for a psychology practice: session records that stay private, assessment and progress over time, remote sessions, and the account — whether the client pays or a scheme does.
At a glance
- Platform
- iScript.live, built by Lighthouse iScript (Pty) Ltd
- Profession this page is about
- Psychologists
- Regulating council
- Health Professions Council of South Africa
- Governing statute
- Health Professions Act 56 of 1974
- Professional board
- Psychology
- Country of practice
- South Africa
No registration-number prefix is published here. It could not be verified against an authoritative source, and a wrong one would be worse than none.
What actually gets in the way
Where the day goes in psychologists' practice
None of this is a software problem in the abstract. Each of these is an hour, a rejected claim or a clinical decision made with less information than it deserved.
Session limits counted on a Post-it
A member has a defined number of psychology sessions in the benefit year. Knowing which session this is, and whether it is still funded, is usually done from memory or a note in the diary.
Notes that must be private, and software that assumes they are not
Practice software written around a shared front desk treats every note as visible to whoever is logged in. Psychological process notes are not administrative records and should not behave like them.
Authorisation is a phone call, not a workflow
Pre-authorisation and managed-care referral for a course of therapy happen outside the record entirely, so the clinical file has no memory of what was authorised or when it expires.
Outcome measures live in a filing cabinet
Scored instruments administered at intake and at review are the only objective trend a psychologist has, and in most practices they are paper that never becomes data.
Solo practice means being your own billing department
Most psychologists practise alone. Coding, submission, remittance matching and follow-up on a short-paid claim are unpaid administrative hours after a full day of clinical work.
Telehealth bolted on beside the record
The video call happens in one application and the session note in another, so the clinician is looking away from the patient to type into a different window.
A day in the practice
What a working day looks like on iScript.live
A psychology day is a small number of long appointments, which changes what the software has to be good at. Throughput is not the problem. Continuity, confidentiality and getting paid are.
Before the session
You arrive already knowing where you left off
The previous session, the formulation and the plan are in structured sections rather than in a block of narrative you have to re-read from the top to find one thing.
LiveIn the room, or on the call
A remote session is the same session
Low-latency video with the record in frame, so a session held remotely produces the same record as one held in the room. Whether a remote session is clinically appropriate remains your judgement under professional guidance.
LiveDuring the session
Structure where structure helps, prose where it does not
Risk, mental state and plan are fields, because those are the things a colleague or a court will look for. The therapeutic content stays prose, because compressing it into a dropdown would be a worse record, not a better one.
Immediately after
The note is closed and attributable
The entry carries who wrote it, when, and against which consent. A later correction shows as a correction rather than replacing what was there.
Reception's view
The front desk can book without reading the note
Reception sees the appointment, the demographic record and the account. It does not see the session content. That is a role configuration, enforced at row level, not a convention people are asked to respect.
LiveAcross months
Progress is visible as a trajectory
Repeat measures and session-by-session notes accumulate against the client as a trend, so a review at session twelve can see what has changed since session one rather than asserting it.
What you get, and what is still being built
The platform, read from your side of the desk
5 of these 6 capabilities are in production today. The rest are labelled with the same status we publish on the roadmap, because a status label is the one thing a clinician should never have to interpret.
Session records with structure where it helps
Structured templates hold presenting problem, formulation, treatment plan, risk assessment and review, with free narrative where narrative is the clinical instrument. Outcome instruments are recorded as scored values that trend across a course of therapy.
Structured consultation workflow
Confidentiality enforced in the data model
Row-level tenant isolation and role-based access with scope enforcement, logged on every read, write and export with actor, timestamp and reason. Who may open a psychology record is a configured decision with an audit trail behind it, not a convention.
Multi-tenant clinical core
Benefit, session count and claim in one place
MediKredit integration to XML specification 3.53 over certificate-based mutual TLS returns member and benefit eligibility, and item-level rejection reasons, reversals and electronic remittance advice — against the session record rather than a separate billing ledger.
Real-time medical-scheme claim switching
Telehealth with the record beside the video
Low-latency video consultations with clinical context in frame, plus WhatsApp Business API messaging and card payment collection — so a remote session, its note and its payment are one workflow.
Telehealth, e-prescribing and messaging
Coding validated before submission
The full ICD-10 Master Industry Table and a tariff library of 25 798 codes, with validation edits applied before the claim is transmitted — which matters most to a sole practitioner who has no billing clerk to chase a rejection.
Coding and tariff intelligence
Risk stratification during the session
The decision-support engine includes algorithmic risk stratification and a management plan cross-referenced to CMS Prescribed Minimum Benefit pairs and the Chronic Disease List. Mental-health pathways are part of the design; the engine itself is not yet live.
Clinical decision-support engine
Built today, or being built
What is live, and what is not, in one table
The same list as the cards above, in the form a sceptical reader wants it. Every status in the right-hand column is resolved from the platform roadmap at the moment this page renders. None of it is typed by hand.
| Capability | Platform capability it comes from | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Session records with structure where it helps | Structured consultation workflow | Live |
| Confidentiality enforced in the data model | Multi-tenant clinical core | Live |
| Benefit, session count and claim in one place | Real-time medical-scheme claim switching | Live |
| Telehealth with the record beside the video | Telehealth, e-prescribing and messaging | Live |
| Coding validated before submission | Coding and tariff intelligence | Live |
| Risk stratification during the session | Clinical decision-support engine | In development |
5 of these 6 capabilities are in production today, and 1 is in development. Anything in development is not available to buy, is not in a beta programme, and should not be counted on when you make a decision.
Why this is different
Confidentiality is an access model, not a promise in a policy document
The reason psychologists distrust practice software is usually correct: software designed around a shared front desk cannot express the idea that a note exists which the front desk may not read. iScript.live enforces that in the data model — row-level isolation between practices, role-based scope inside one, and an audit entry on every single read, so a disclosure can be proven or disproven rather than argued about.
- Every read of a psychology record is logged with actor, timestamp and reason.
- Scope is configured per role, so an intern, an associate and reception genuinely see different things.
- Telehealth, note and payment are one workflow, so nothing sensitive moves through a third-party application.
What it replaces
What actually comes out of the practice
Psychology practices are frequently the most exposed, because the tooling is often generic and the data is the most sensitive on this list.
| What a practice runs today | What it becomes |
|---|---|
| Session notes in a word processor, in a folder, on one laptop | Structured session records with an audit trail, encrypted at rest and isolated at row level per practiceLive |
| A generic diary tool that anyone with the login can read | Role-scoped access, so reception books appointments without reading session content |
| A consumer video-call tool with the notes in another window | Video consultation with the clinical record in frame and the consent recorded against the sessionLive |
| Invoices produced by hand at month end and chased personally | An account produced from the session, with card payment collection and messaging from the same record |
| A consent form signed on paper and filed somewhere else | Consent captured in the session and retrievable with the entry it applied to |
The confidentiality argument is the whole argument here. Row-level cryptographic isolation between practices, and role scoping inside a practice, are the two mechanisms that matter.
Billing and medical schemes
How psychologists actually get paid
Psychology is a discipline where scheme billing and private payment genuinely coexist, and where a client may move between the two mid-course as a benefit runs out.
Claims are submitted through the live MediKredit integration, with member and benefit eligibility available beforehand and item-level rejection reasons, reversals and electronic remittance advice returning against the claim. What a psychologist may bill, and against which registration category, depends on that registration, the practice code number and the scheme's rules.
Private and self-paying clients are treated as a normal case rather than an exception. The client can be their own debtor, card payment collection is live, and an account can be settled at the end of a session rather than invoiced later and chased.
Where a client's benefit is exhausted part-way through a course of therapy, the practical need is to change who is paying without breaking the clinical record. The debtor and the patient are separate concepts in the data model precisely so that can happen without starting a new file.
Session limits and what a plan covers for psychological services are set by the scheme, and are not restated here. Confirming eligibility before a session is what the platform contributes.
The billing mechanics, and their status
- Eligibility and benefit check
- Live, through MediKredit.
- Real-time claim submission
- Live, through MediKredit.
- Client as their own debtor
- Live.
- Card payment collection
- Live.
- Switching a course from scheme to private mid-way
- Live, without starting a new clinical record.
Who else touches it
Who else in the practice uses this, and what they can see
A practice is not one person, and a clinical record that only the clinician can reach is a record somebody else will keep a second copy of. Roles are configured by the practice, not assumed by the platform, and every role is scoped at row level.
| Role | What they do, and what they can see |
|---|---|
| The practitioner | Consults, records, prescribes where the registration allows it, and submits. Sees the full clinical record for patients within the practice. |
| Reception and front desk | Books, checks members in, confirms eligibility before the appointment and takes payment. Sees the demographic, appointment and account layers, not the clinical note. |
| Billing and accounts | Works claims, item-level rejections, reversals and remittance advice, and reconciles what was paid against what was submitted. Sees coded lines, not free-text clinical content. |
| Practice manager or owner | Configures the practice, the sites, the fees, the templates and who may do what. Sees activity and financial reporting across every site in the group. |
| A supervisor, where the registration requires one | Countersigns and reviews the work of a practitioner practising under supervision, against the same record rather than a printed copy of it. |
| An assistant, associate or locum | Joins the practice as a provider rather than as a shared login, so their activity is attributable to them and ends when their association does. |
Every read, write and export carries the actor, the timestamp and the reason, so who saw what is answerable rather than reconstructed.
Getting started
From registration to a working practice, and what moving across involves
Onboarding is measured in days rather than in an implementation project. Nothing here requires a server, a site visit or a consultant. Migrating history is the separate question, and it is answered below rather than skipped.
Standing the practice up
01
Register your practice
A short online registration gives a sole practitioner or a group practice its own tenant, branding and subdomain, with no server and no implementation project.
02
Set who may see what
Roles and scope are configured before the first patient. In a group practice this is where you decide whether reception, an intern or an associate psychologist may open a narrative record.
03
Work the session, record the outcome
Session notes, formulation, risk assessment and scored instruments go into a structured record, in the room or over telehealth, with the video and the note in the same view.
04
Claim and track the course
The claim is validated and submitted in real time, remittance is matched against the session, and session count against benefit is visible on the record rather than counted by hand.
Moving off your current system
Moving practice software is the part everybody underestimates, so it is worth being exact about what is quick and what is not. Standing the practice up, as set out above, is quick. Bringing a decade of history across is not, and is scoped as its own piece of work.
Step 1
Run in parallel for a short period
Most practices keep the outgoing system readable while they work live in the new one, rather than attempting a hard cut-over on a Monday morning. Nothing about the platform requires the old system to be switched off first.
Step 2
Bring patients across
Patient demographics, medical-aid details and balances import first, because those are what reception needs on day one. Clinical history follows, and how much of it comes across as structured data rather than as attached documents depends entirely on what the outgoing system will export.
Step 3
Move the money last
Open claims and outstanding debtors are the last thing to move, and usually the cleanest approach is to finish the claim cycle already in flight on the old system while new work starts on the new one.
Historic-data migration is quoted separately from the platform, because its length is a property of the outgoing system rather than of this one. A practice that exports well is a short piece of work. A practice whose history exists only as scanned paper is a decision about how much of it is worth carrying.
Regulation, record-keeping and compliance
What the record has to survive
Clinical software carries the most sensitive data a person has, and a regulator will eventually read what it produced. Compliance is designed into the platform rather than certified around it afterwards.
Registration authority
Professional Board for Psychology
Health Professions Council of South Africa, under the Health Professions Act 56 of 1974.
Confidentiality and access control
Role-based access with scope enforcement, and an immutable audit trail logging actor, timestamp and reason on every read, write and export of a psychology record. Access is a configured decision that leaves evidence.
Keeping of patient records
Aligned to HPCSA guidance on the keeping of patient records and on telemedicine, with the session record, consent and correspondence held as one auditable clinical artefact.
POPIA
Mental-health information carries the highest sensitivity under POPIA. Lawful processing, consent records, data residency and subject-access handling are built into the platform rather than administered alongside it.
Registers within the board
Psychologists, psychometrists and registered counsellors are distinct registers under the Professional Board for Psychology and have distinct scopes. The platform models them as distinct roles; the scope of each remains the practitioner's professional responsibility.
The record has to be attributable
Every clinical entry carries who made it, when, and against which consent, on an immutable audit trail. An entry that is later corrected shows as a correction rather than replacing what was there, because a record that can be silently rewritten is not evidence of anything.
The record has to be retrievable years later
Clinical records outlive software, staff and sometimes practices. Records are held as structured data with their coding intact and are exportable, so the practice is not dependent on this platform continuing to exist in order to read its own history. Statutory retention periods are set by the regulator and the relevant legislation, not by us, and are not restated on this page.
Consent is part of the record, not a filing cabinet
Consent to treat, consent to a remote consultation and consent to share are captured in the consultation and stored against it, so the consent that applied at the time is retrievable with the entry it applied to.
Confidentiality is enforced by the data model
Row-level cryptographic isolation between practices, and role scoping inside a practice, mean that access to a session record is a technical fact rather than an office convention. Reception can run the diary without being able to read the note.
A record that has to survive being read by someone else
Psychological records are sometimes read years later by a colleague, a court or the client. Structured risk, mental state and plan sections exist because those are the parts a later reader has to find quickly, and because a narrative-only note makes that search unreliable.
Remote sessions carry their own consent
Consent to a remote consultation is captured with the session it applied to. Whether a remote session is clinically appropriate for a given client remains a professional judgement, and the platform does not make it for you.
What it costs
How this is priced, and what the quote depends on
The clinical platform is free, on every seat, permanently. You pay only for the medical claims you submit — at a rate that falls as you add modules — and optionally for the two business modules themselves. Every figure is published below rather than quoted on request.
01
CORE — the clinical platform, R0
The record, the diary, the billing, the claims workflow and the AI documentation, on every seat, at no cost and with no expiry. Not a trial and not a cut-down edition. Claims are R9.95 each on CORE, and that is the only charge.
02
R9.95, R8.95 or R7.95 per claim submitted
You pay for claims you actually send, from prepaid credits that never expire. The rate falls as you move up: R9.95 on CORE, R8.95 on STRIDE with one module, R7.95 on SUMMIT with both. Never a percentage of what the claim is worth, and never a percentage of what you earn.
03
STRIDE R699 a module, SUMMIT R1 199 for both
Website and Finance are optional business modules. They do not make you a better practitioner; they make you a better business, and they lower your per-claim rate while they are on. Neither is required to practise on the platform.
What the quote turns on
- How many medical-scheme claims you actually submit in a month — that is the only usage-based charge there is.
- Whether you want the Website module, the Finance module, both, or neither — which also sets your per-claim rate: R9.95 on CORE, R8.95 on STRIDE, R7.95 on SUMMIT.
- Nothing else. Seats are free, sites are free, storage is free, and support is not a tier.
- Migrating historic patient data from an outgoing system is scoped separately and quoted before any work starts.
- Nothing here is indexed to your turnover, your collections or the value of your claims.
For psychologists specifically
Single-practitioner psychology practices with mixed private and scheme work usually find the per-claim model the closer fit, because it does not price a practice on headcount when the constraint is session hours.
Every price on this site is published, not quoted. We never charge a percentage of what you earn. Registering a practice does not commit you to a contract.
Ask for a quote for your practiceObjections
The reasons not to do this, answered
Every one of these has been said to us by a practitioner in this profession or one adjacent to it. Where the answer is no, it says no.
My notes are the most sensitive documents in my practice. Why would I put them in someone else's system?
It is the correct question, and the honest answer is a comparison rather than a reassurance. Records are encrypted at rest with AES-256, in transit with TLS 1.3, isolated at row level between practices, and every access is logged with actor, timestamp and reason. The alternative most practices actually run is an unencrypted document folder on a laptop with no access log at all.
Will I be forced to turn therapy into checkboxes?
No. Risk, mental state and plan are structured because a later reader has to find them. The therapeutic content stays prose. Compressing a formulation into a dropdown would produce a worse record, and a worse record is not a feature.
Can my receptionist see my session notes?
Not unless you configure it that way. Reception sees appointments, demographics and the account. Access is scoped at row level and enforced by the platform rather than by policy, and every access is recorded.
LiveI am a single practitioner. Is this over-engineered for me?
The platform is multi-tenant, which for a single practitioner means it is the same isolation a group gets rather than a cut-down version of it. Pricing has a per-claim model for exactly this case, because per-clinician pricing on one clinician is a blunt instrument.
Questions practitioners actually ask
Psychologists and iScript.live
Short, direct answers, each written to make sense on its own if it is read without the question above it or the page around it.
Is there practice management software for psychologists in South Africa that handles medical aid claims?
Yes. iScript.live submits psychology claims through MediKredit over certificate-based mutual TLS to XML specification 3.53, returning member and benefit eligibility, item-level rejection reasons, reversals and electronic remittance advice. Coding is validated against the ICD-10 Master Industry Table before the claim is transmitted.
How does iScript.live protect the confidentiality of psychology session notes?
Confidentiality is enforced in the data model. Each practice is a cryptographically isolated tenant, access inside it is role-based with scope enforcement, and every read, write and export is logged with actor, timestamp and reason — so a disclosure can be proven rather than assumed.
Can iScript.live track how many psychology sessions a medical scheme member has left?
Benefit and eligibility are returned by the live MediKredit integration and held against the patient record, so session count and remaining benefit sit on the clinical file rather than in a receptionist's diary. Scheme-specific limits still depend on what the scheme returns.
Does iScript.live support online therapy sessions?
Yes. Telehealth is live, with low-latency video and the clinical record in the same view rather than in another application. Sessions, notes, consent and card payment collection run in one workflow, and the platform is aligned to HPCSA guidance on telemedicine.
Can a sole-practitioner psychologist use iScript.live without a practice manager?
Yes. It is designed for that case. Coding is validated before submission, claims are matched to remittance automatically, and patient messaging and payment collection run from the record — which removes most of the after-hours administration a solo practice otherwise absorbs.
Does iScript.live record psychometric or outcome measures?
Scored instruments are recorded as discrete values against the patient, so intake and review scores trend across a course of therapy rather than sitting in a paper file. Which instruments a practitioner may administer remains a matter of their register and scope.
Is iScript.live suitable for a group psychology practice with interns?
Yes. Psychologists, interns, psychometrists, registered counsellors and administrative staff are configured as separate roles with separate permissions against the same patient record, with per-practitioner diaries and reporting inside one tenant. Supervision is evidenced rather than assumed, because every read of a record is logged with actor, timestamp and reason.
Does iScript.live include clinical decision support for mental health?
Not yet. The clinical decision-support engine, which includes algorithmic risk stratification and management plans cross-referenced to Prescribed Minimum Benefit pairs, is in development. Nothing on the platform currently offers automated mental-health decision support. We publish that status deliberately, because a clinician should never have to guess which parts of a platform are live.
Is iScript.live suitable for a private psychology practice with no medical-aid billing?
Yes. Scheme claiming is available but not required. A client can be their own debtor, card payment collection is live, and an account can be settled at the end of a session. The per-claim commercial model exists for practices where scheme submission is occasional or absent.
Can a psychologist run remote sessions on iScript.live?
Yes. Low-latency video consultation with the clinical record in frame is live, and the consent to a remote session is captured against the session it applied to. Whether a remote session is clinically appropriate for a particular client remains a professional judgement under the relevant professional guidance.
How does iScript.live protect psychological session records?
Records are encrypted with AES-256 at rest and TLS 1.3 in transit, isolated at row level between practices, and scoped by role inside a practice so reception can book without reading session content. Every read, write and export is recorded with the actor, the timestamp and the reason.
The setting
What psychologists and their practices look like on this platform
Editorial images, chosen to show the setting the software is used in rather than a stock photograph of a laptop.
These are AI-generated editorial images. They depict no real practitioner, patient or premises, and are not photographs of anyone on this platform or of any of the practices named elsewhere on this site.
The same HPCSA board
Other professions registered with the Psychology board
Psychologists across the clinical, counselling, educational, industrial and research categories, together with registered counsellors and psychometrists. If you have landed on the wrong page for your own registration, the right one is probably below.
All 28 professions, grouped by boardBring your practice onto the platform
Register your practice and test the access model yourself
The fastest way to judge whether the confidentiality model is real is to configure a role and try to read something you should not be able to.