Documentation / Guides

Adding and managing patient records

This guide covers the day-to-day work of a patient record: adding one, keeping the basic info and status current, tagging records, and writing clinical notes that hold up if they're ever questioned later.

Add a patient

Create a patient record. Only the first and last name are required; add contact details, address, postcode and country, date of birth, social security number (ΑΜΚΑ) and tax details (ΑΦΜ, tax office) as you have them. A tax invoice can only be issued once the tax ID is filled in. Notes, files, forms and billing then attach to the record.

Keep status current

A patient carries a status set by your vertical: Active, Recall, Completed or Other for dental practices, Active, Inactive, Archived or Other for the others. The API returns when the status last changed (statusChangedAt). Use status to separate people you're actively treating from people you aren't, rather than relying on memory.

Tag for fast filtering

Create colour-coded tags once in Settings → Catalog, then add them to a patient from the patient's page, one patient at a time. Each row of the patient list shows the patient's tags, and the list can be filtered by tag (see below).

Sort and filter the list

On the Patients page, the search box finds a patient by name, phone or email. Next to it, Sort & filter opens a panel from the right with everything else:

• Sort by: newest or oldest added, last name or first name (A to Z), age (youngest or oldest first), last visit, or next appointment.
• Details: status, tag, gender, age from and to, and the answer about using the patient's files.
• Appointments: whether a next appointment is booked, the location (practices with two or more locations: anyone with an appointment there, past or future), and the practitioner they saw.
• Treatment (when the record shows its Treatment section): when the treatment started, from and to, the treatment type, the diagnosis and the treatment's status.

The list changes as you choose, so Show results only closes the panel. The button shows how many filters are on, and each one appears as a small label under the search box; its cross removes it, and Clear filters removes them all. A filtered list is also its page address, so it can be bookmarked or sent to a colleague. On a phone the button is just its icon and the number of filters on.

Import or export the list

The ⋮ button to the right of Add patient holds Import CSV and Export CSV, for the practice owner. Export downloads the list as it is searched, filtered and sorted. Import brings patients in from another system's CSV file: it matches the columns, shows what it will do, and saves nothing until you confirm.

Decide about using a patient's files

Each record asks whether you may use that patient's files — x-rays, scans and photos — for teaching or promotion. The answer is Yes, No or Not asked, and every record starts as Not asked. Not asked is not a No: it means nobody has put the question, which is what you need to know before using a photograph.

A form sent to a patient you chose can ask the question for you, and the record then links to the form they signed. You can also set it by hand on the record, and the activity log says who changed it and when. If your practice never uses its files this way, turn the question off in Settings → General, under What a record shows; answers already given are kept.

Choose what a record shows

Under Settings → General → What a record shows, the practice owner can switch off the record sections the practice does not use: Treatment, and for dental practices Photos and x-rays, the Dental chart and the Gum chart, as well as the question about using the patient's files. Everything is shown until it is switched off, and switching a section off deletes nothing: it comes back as it was when switched on again. A hidden Treatment section also takes the treatment filters off the patient list.

Write a note that lasts

Editing a clinical note saves the previous version, with who edited it and when, in the note's revision history (the 20 most recent versions are kept). Deleting a note deletes it and its history permanently.

Set how a patient hears from you

Each patient has two switches, Email reminders and SMS reminders, off until the patient agrees. They control appointment reminders only, and only on the channels the practice has switched on under Send reminders by in Settings → General. Booking emails (booked, confirmed, cancelled) and form links are sent regardless. Text messages use credits.

Chart teeth and gums (dental practices)

A dental practice sees a dental chart and a gum chart on each patient's page. To chart a finding or treatment, click a tooth, choose what it is, tick the surfaces if asked, choose existing, planned or completed, and save. Select several teeth to chart them together, or to chart a bridge in one go.

When planned work is done, open the tooth and mark it completed. Removing an entry takes it off the chart but keeps it in the tooth's history, with who charted it and when. Each tooth can carry a note, and so can the chart.

For a gum chart, start a new exam and type the probe readings; the cursor moves to the next site on its own and the exam saves as you go. Compare shows what changed since an earlier exam.

Photos and x-rays (dental practices)

A dental practice has a Photos and x-rays card on each patient's page, for the orthodontic record. Photos come in dated sets: Initial, Progress 1, 2 and so on, Final, and Retention. Press New set, then fill its ten places: five intraoral photos, three of the face, a panoramic and a cephalometric x-ray. Drop a picture on a place, or use its ⋮ menu to upload one or to choose one of the patient's files. Every picture is also kept in the patient's Files.

A filled place's ⋮ menu has:

• Edit photo: turn it left or right, mirror it, straighten it by a few degrees (with a grid to line it up), crop it, and change its brightness, contrast and gamma. The picture changes as you go and nothing is kept until Save; Reset edits takes the edits off. Editing never changes the file itself, so it can always be undone.
• Download as JPG: the picture as a JPG file, turned and edited the way the place shows it.
• Take out of the set: the picture stays in the patient's Files.

Click a picture to see it full screen. There, zoom with the mouse wheel, a two-finger pinch, a double-click or the + and − buttons, drag to move around, and use the arrows (or ← and →) to go through the set's other pictures.

With two sets or more, Before and after shows two sets side by side, place by place; Swap switches the sides. When a place has a picture on both sides, Download comparison (JPG) saves one picture with before on the left and after on the right, each labelled with its set and date.

Cephalometric analysis (dental practices)

On a set's cephalometric x-ray, the ⋮ menu has Cephalometric analysis. It opens the x-ray full screen, with a panel beside it.

• Landmarks: the panel asks for one landmark at a time (S, N, Or, Po and so on, 34 in all, grouped by cranial base, maxilla, mandible, teeth and soft tissue) and says where it is. Click on the x-ray to place it. Drag a landmark, or move it with the arrow keys, to correct it; Skip leaves one out. Zoom with the wheel or the buttons. Everything saves as you work.
• Soft tissue: the profile from the forehead to the chin, 13 points from soft-tissue glabella (G′) to soft-tissue menton (Me′), with the nose, the columella, subnasale and both lips. A smooth profile line is drawn through the points you place.
• Outlines (optional): under the landmarks, pick the inferior alveolar canal or an upper or lower third molar, then click along it on the x-ray. Done (or Enter) finishes it, Escape cancels it, Remove deletes it. Its points can be dragged afterwards. Outlines are drawn in red, are not asked for, do not count as landmarks and are never measured.
• Suggest landmarks: places 25 of the 34 landmarks automatically (Ba, Pt and seven soft-tissue points are always placed by hand). It runs on your own computer, so the x-ray is not sent anywhere; the first time it downloads the model (about 45 MB) and keeps it. The suggestions appear as dashed purple rings and are not measured or saved until you confirm them: dragging one that is off confirms it where you put it, and Confirm all confirms the rest. Discard suggestions drops them. Already placed landmarks are left as they are. Check every suggestion: you remain responsible for the tracing.
• Mark the ruler: click two marks on the ruler in the x-ray and type the distance between them in mm. Angles are measured without it; lengths need it.
• Analysis: choose Steiner, Downs, McNamara, Ricketts, Tweed, Björk-Jarabak or Soft tissue (nasolabial angle, facial convexity, the H angle, the lips to the E-line and the S-line, and more). Each measurement shows its value, the usual adult value (± one standard deviation) and whether it is within, above or below it, and the analysis lines are drawn over the x-ray. A measurement that cannot be read yet says which landmarks it needs, or that the ruler is not marked. McNamara's lengths have separate values for women and men, taken from the patient's gender or chosen on the screen. The usual values are a guide to read against, not a diagnosis.
• Compare with another set: lays the tracing of another set over this one, lined up on S-N at S and scaled by each x-ray's ruler, the earlier set in blue and the later in orange, outlines dashed, with a table of how the main measurements changed.

The landmarks stay on the x-ray if it is later turned, straightened or cropped. If the place gets a different x-ray, the screen says the tracing was made on another one and offers to start a new tracing.