Capturing cases
In short. Type the patient’s name and MRN, dictate or type your notes, tap Capture. The agent reads your notes and fills in the procedure, side and site, role, times and any complication. Your notes stay exactly as you said them. Anything the agent is unsure of, it asks you.
The capture form
- Patient name and MRN, both required.
- Hospital is your main one; tap change for another. Case date defaults to today and Role to primary surgeon.
- Notes is the main field. Type, or tap the microphone to dictate and tap again to stop. See Dictating.
- Add details opens procedure, side and anatomical site. The agent fills them from your notes if you leave them empty. Several procedures in one sitting: Combined operations.
- Photo, Record clip and Hand to assistant sit below Record, so the form and Record fit on a phone’s first screen. Tap one and they scroll into view. A photo may file itself to the right case, or wait in your Inbox for you to file; Filing photos explains when each happens.
The patient’s name and MRN are scrambled on your phone before they leave it. Who can see what is on Where your data lives.
What happens after you tap Capture
- The agent reads your notes and fills in the procedure, side and site, role, start and end times, any complication and any findings you mentioned. An age or sex you said (“a 65-year-old man”) is picked up too.
- If the agent is unsure of something important, it asks you right there on the capture screen. Once you answer, the case is saved. An unanswered question waits in your Inbox.
- Otherwise the case is saved and appears on your case list.
The procedure you said is matched to the standard list in the background; Procedure names explains how.
Your notes stay exactly as you dictated them
The agent reads your notes. It never edits, trims or cleans them. What you dictated or typed stays on the case word for word, including notes that mention several procedures or both sides.
This is the same with Add details open or closed, and when you capture by voice. A procedure you pick under Add details fills the procedure on the case. It is not added to your notes.
The case shows a filled from your notes line listing what the agent picked up. The one change ever made to the words is on your phone: MRNs, phone numbers and names the app recognises are removed before anything is sent for the agent to read. A new patient’s name may not be recognised, so leave names out of your notes.
What doesn’t work yet
- Capture needs a connection. Tap Capture offline and the app shows an error and keeps what you typed on the form, so you can tap again when you are back online. Nothing is saved or queued in the meantime.
- Leaving the form clears it. If you navigate away before tapping Capture, the form is emptied. Capture in one go.
- Changing the MRN afterwards is a guided correction, not an edit. See The MRN.
To bring in a backlog of past cases instead of capturing them one by one, see Importing your past cases.