Semble for ADHD and autism clinics: fit, gaps and alternatives

If you're setting up or scaling a neurodevelopmental assessment service, Semble is a name you'll keep hearing. It's a practice management platform that has been in the UK market for years, and new providers who don't know where to start often go with it by default.

Semble covers general practice management: records, booking, questionnaires, video and billing. At the time of writing, its public pages don't describe the work specific to an ADHD or autism pathway, such as automatic scoring of rating scales, informant tracking, screening rules or cited draft reports, so staff do that work by hand.

1. Semble is a fair fit for practices not centred on neurodevelopmental assessment#

Semble is a reasonable choice for a practice whose work isn't centred on neurodevelopmental or complex mental health assessment. General clinical care doesn't need long cited reports, informant questionnaires or screening rules, so a broad, general platform is a fair fit. If your work also relies on ordering lab and blood tests, Semble connects to labs for that. An ADHD or autism assessment service needs more from its software.

2. ADHD and autism reports take hours, and clinician time limits capacity#

A diagnostic report isn't a consultation note. It pulls together hours of interview, several scored questionnaires and third-party evidence into a long document that has to hold up at audit, so a single report can take hours where a note in another speciality takes minutes; our article on how long an ADHD report should take has the benchmarks.

Clinician time is the main limit on how many assessments a service can deliver, and report writing is a common reason experienced assessors burn out and move on. Cutting report writing time by 75% gives that time back to clinicians, who are hard to hire and hard to keep.

3. An ADHD and autism assessment pathway needs six things beyond the consultation#

A neurodevelopmental assessment is the end-to-end process from referral to diagnostic report and follow-up, and it's built very differently from a course of therapy or a one-off consultation. It needs six things.

Screening at intake. ADHD and autism services get a lot of referrals, and each one needs standard screening questionnaires scored and sent on for a decision: go ahead, ask for more information, or signpost. At that volume this has to run on rules rather than someone reading each one, with the clinician making the call on whatever the rules send to them.

Informant questionnaires. A single case often needs a parent form, a teacher form and sometimes GP input. Each form goes to a different person with its own deadline, and each has to be chased, returned, scored and attached to the right patient.

Diagnostic appointments booked as a bundle. An autism assessment usually pairs an ADOS-2 observation with an ADI-R developmental interview, often run by different clinicians, plus a feedback appointment. These need booking together, not as three separate slots.

Cited diagnostic reports. The end product of the pathway is a long document built on evidence, pulling together interview transcripts, questionnaire scores and school reports, and it must stand up to checks by commissioners, auditors and quality standards.

Reporting by payer type. Providers taking NHS Right to Choose referrals report differently on RTC, private and contract work, and must produce data for ICBs that is ready to submit.

Titration follow-up. ADHD diagnoses lead to months of planned medication follow-up, with symptoms and side effects checked at each step.

A general platform handles the consultation in the middle of this pathway well. The problems show up at intake and at the report, and a case can stall at every hand-off.

A neurodevelopmental assessment pathwayReferral inScreeningPatient & informant questionnairesself / parent / teacher / GPDiagnostic appointmentsADOS-2 and ADI-RCited draft reportPayer reporting and titrationThe six stages of an ADHD and autism assessment pathway, from referral to titration follow-up.

4. Practice management in Cerebric matches a general system, plus six pathway steps#

Cerebric runs the whole practice, with the records, booking, billing and patient portal of a general system (listed below). On top of that, it runs the six steps of the neurodevelopmental pathway that a general platform leaves to your team: screening at intake, scored patient and informant questionnaires, ADOS and ADI-R scheduling, report drafting with every claim linked to its source, titration follow-up and Right to Choose payer reporting. Each is described in this article.

Records, booking and billing work as in a general system, and some go further#

Cerebric does what a general practice system does: patient records, online booking, room-level scheduling, payments and invoicing across several providers, insurance billing, letters, intake forms that feed the record, automatic reminders, reporting and links to the other tools you rely on. On several of these it goes further than a general platform: more payment options, scheduling built around assessment work, and a patient portal designed for the people using it.

So the day-to-day basics aren't a reason to prefer a general platform. The difference is in the pathway work.

Cerebric is a UKCA Class I medical device with a DCB0129 safety case#

Cerebric is also built to NHS clinical-safety standards that general platforms usually aren't: it is a registered UKCA Class I medical device with a DCB0129 clinical safety case, alongside DSPT (Standards Exceeded), DTAC and Cyber Essentials Plus. That matters for any service taking NHS work.

5. ADHD and autism pathways need eight features general platforms leave out#

Each feature below is part of the neurodevelopmental pathway, and each is missing from a general practice platform. You can check this against Semble's own public website and help pages at the time of writing.

Automatic scoring turns SNAP-IV and Vanderbilt answers into subscale scores#

A general questionnaire builder records raw answers. It doesn't turn a SNAP-IV or a Vanderbilt into subscale scores, so scoring stays a job done by hand on every case. Cerebric scores standard rating scales automatically.

Informant tracking sends and chases parent, teacher and GP forms separately#

General forms are completed by the patient and matched to one record, with no way to send parent, teacher and GP versions to different people and chase each one. Cerebric handles each informant separately, with automatic reminders.

A portal built for neurodivergent users gets forms back without chasing#

The people completing these forms are often children and adults with ADHD or autism, and their families. Cerebric's portal is built for how they use it:

• easy, with few steps
• clear progress as each step is completed
• gentle prompts toward the next one
• progress that's saved, so a form can be left and returned to rather than lost

Forms get completed and returned on time without staff chasing. Hard-to-complete forms are a common reason clinics on general platforms fall back on Google Forms and retype the answers by hand.

Rules the clinic sets hold referrals for clinician review before booking#

Showing or hiding questions inside a form doesn't send a referral anywhere, so intake stays a queue worked by hand and important answers depend on someone spotting them. Cerebric applies rules the clinic sets up, such as "if a referral answers yes to this question, hold it for clinician review before booking", and sends referrals to clinician review to match.

Assessment scheduling books ADOS, ADI-R and feedback in one action#

A general booking tool fills one slot at a time. Cerebric books the ADOS, ADI-R and feedback bundle across several clinicians in one action. It also works around the diaries of freelance and sessional clinicians, matching who is free, dates and conditions. For services that run on contracted and freelance assessors, that cuts the time staff spend keeping the calendar up to date.

Cited draft reports link every sentence to its source for clinician review#

An AI scribe turns a consultation into notes and letters, not a diagnostic report built from transcripts, scores and other people's documents; our comparison of AI scribes and assessment platforms explains the difference. Cerebric produces a draft from templates the clinic sets up, with every sentence linked to its source, which the clinician then reviews, edits and approves in Split View. Providers using Cerebric have measured an 87% reduction in staff time spent on screening, and clinicians say they finish reports in a fraction of the time.

"I had my report, recommendations and all, finished by 5pm. I love how quick and easy it makes filling in all the DIVA boxes. I am over the moon," one Consultant Psychiatrist using Cerebric told us.

Reporting by payer type splits private, RTC and contract figures#

Figures split across private, RTC and contract work, and exports in the format NHS returns need, are not part of a general reporting module. Cerebric produces them directly.

Pathway reminders are automated, and messages stay inside the record#

Cerebric automates the chasing that takes up admin time: reminders for staff tasks, for patients to complete portal forms and to book, and pre-appointment prompts for both clinicians and patients. Messages are kept inside the record, so there is less email.

6. Running Cerebric alongside Semble or another system lowers the risk of switching#

Cerebric is built to be your core system. But if you're part-way through a contract and don't want to move everything at once, you don't have to. Cerebric works on its own or alongside an existing system through a Chrome extension, so you can keep your current setup for records and billing and run the assessment pathway in Cerebric from day one. Starting alongside lowers the risk of switching, and many clinics then move more of the pathway into Cerebric over time.

7. Cerebric suits clinics whose core or fastest-growing work is ADHD and autism assessment#

Cerebric is built for you if:

• ADHD and autism assessments are your core or fastest-growing service
• Your bottleneck is screening, informant chasing and report writing
• Saving clinicians time and keeping them happy makes a big difference to your business
• You need the pathway steps above: scored parent, teacher and GP forms, reports that hold up at audit sentence by sentence, and Right to Choose reporting by payer type with exports ready for the NHS

If none of those describe your work, a general platform will probably serve you fine.

8. ADHD clinic software vendors should show you five things before you sign#

Ask any vendor to show you these five things before you sign:

1. A parent and a teacher each completing a questionnaire on the same case, and where the scores land.
2. A referral routed to clinician review by a screening rule you set up yourself.
3. An ADOS plus ADI-R plus feedback sequence booked across two clinicians in one action.
4. One sentence of a draft report traced back to its source evidence.
5. The exact data export your RTC commissioner or ICB asks for.

A platform that can do all five out of the box was built for this pathway. One that can't may still suit general practice work.