Medical Practices and AI Search: AHPRA Advertising Rules Still Apply

Medical practices are being told to "get found in AI". Much of that advice assumes you can publish whatever helps: patient stories, five-star reviews, bold claims about results. For a regulated health service, you cannot. The rules that apply to your advertising do not switch off because the reader is an AI assistant, and an assistant may quote your website to the public.

This is general information, not legal advice. Check AHPRA's guidance, and take advice if you are unsure about a particular item.

Your website is advertising

AHPRA's advertising guidelines cover regulated health services, and its summary of the requirements makes a few points that matter here:

• Advertising must not be false, misleading or deceptive.
• Claims about registration, qualifications and competence must be correct.
• Leaving out accurate risk information can create an unreasonable expectation of benefit.
• You are expected to check content produced by others on your behalf, which includes an agency, a freelancer or an AI tool.

Your service pages, FAQs and blog posts all count. Writing them so an assistant can quote them does not exempt them.

Testimonials

The big trap is testimonials. AHPRA's testimonial tool explains that the National Law does not allow testimonials, or purported testimonials, to advertise a regulated health service. A testimonial in this sense is a recommendation or positive statement about the clinical aspects of a service. Comments that only concern customer service or communication, with nothing clinical in them, are treated differently.

That has direct consequences for the usual AI SEO advice to "collect and display reviews":

• On your own website and social media, you are responsible for what appears. AHPRA's guidance points to removing testimonials from channels you control, and to disabling review functions you cannot edit.
• On third-party review or booking sites, AHPRA's guidance generally puts responsibility on the site that runs the review feature, but you remain responsible for other content you control there, and engaging with reviews can itself become a problem.
• Selective editing is misleading. Do not trim a mixed review to its positive half or reword a negative one.

Never fabricate reviews. It is dishonest in any industry, and in a regulated one it is worse. If you are unsure whether something counts as a testimonial, read AHPRA's tool before it goes live.

Claims about results

AHPRA expects claims about the benefits or effectiveness of a treatment to be supported by acceptable evidence. Patient stories and personal anecdotes can create unreasonable expectations, because one person's result does not predict another's. That affects the type of content that tends to be quoted well, such as "results you can expect". Keep to what you can support.

A safer pattern for an AI-friendly page is plain, factual information:

• what the service involves and who it suits
• how to book, what to bring and what to expect on the day
• opening hours, location and how to reach you
• who the practitioners are and their registered qualifications, stated accurately

Privacy still applies

Two privacy points matter when staff start using AI tools:

• The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner's guidance on commercially available AI products says privacy obligations apply to personal information entered into an AI system, and recommends not entering personal information, especially sensitive information, into publicly available generative AI tools. Health information is sensitive information.
• It also says any public-facing AI tools, such as chatbots, should be clearly identified as AI.

So when you test what assistants say about your practice, use your public details only. Never paste patient information into a chatbot to draft a page. Our AI security article sets out the habits to build, and AISA's four questions are a good test for any new tool.

A short checklist before publishing

1. Does any page contain a testimonial, or a quote about clinical outcomes, on a channel we control?

2. Is every claim about a treatment supported by evidence we can point to?

3. Are practitioner names, titles and registrations accurate?

4. Has a person with the right authority reviewed anything an agency or AI tool drafted?

5. Do our business details match across our site, our Business Profile and our listings? See why your Google Business Profile matters.

6. Can crawlers read the page at all? See Is your website readable by AI crawlers?

Where we fit

We are an IT provider, not a regulator or a law firm, and we do not make compliance decisions for you. What we can do is help with the technical side: keeping the website secure, making sure your crawler settings are deliberate, and supporting your practice's systems. See our page for medical practices, read the wider AI search guide or get in touch. Security basics for a practice are covered by the Essential Eight.