Patients & Cohort
The organisation’s patient directory
A service’s patients come from the organisation’s own Medplum patient directory, the same patients the clinic sees in the CMS. They are not owned by any one service, and the same patient can be in several services’ cohorts.
New patients are added to the organisation, not to a service. An organisation admin does this from /patients with Add a patient (first and last name, email, phone, date of birth, gender, ID type such as NRIC or passport, address and postal code), or in bulk by seeding from a CSV file.
Adding a patient to the cohort
From the service’s Patients tab (or the wizard’s last step, or /services/[serviceId]/board), click Add patient to cohort:
- Search by name among the organisation’s Medplum patients. Patients already in this cohort are not offered.
- Optionally add Clinical notes: referral letters, consult notes, discharge summaries. They are saved as the patient’s first encounter note for this service, and their patient context is generated from it.
- Click Add to cohort.
To take a patient out of the cohort, use the X on their row and confirm. They stay in the organisation’s directory and in any other service.
What happens when a patient is added
Configured on Settings → On patient added:
- Patient portal invite. If the patient has no patient-portal account yet, Medbot creates a 7-day invite link for them. The link is sent as part of the welcome message (“You can also view your care plan and message your care team here: …”), so turn the welcome message on if new patients should receive it.
- Welcome message (“Send a welcome message when a patient is added to the cohort”). Type the Message inline, with
{{variables}}such as{{firstName}}, and choose the Channel: SMS, WhatsApp or Patient portal. - Onboarding agent (“Assess the patient with the onboarding agent”). Runs the chosen onboarding agent against the new patient. The default one raises a task only when the patient clearly does not belong in the service. See Service Agents.
A toast confirms what happened.
The cohort roster
The roster shows, per patient: Pending tasks, Notes, Messages and Last message, so you can see who needs attention without leaving the page. Click a name (or the eye icon) to open the patient’s page.
A patient’s page
Each patient has a page per service, /services/[serviceId]/patients/[patientId]:
- Header: name, gender, phone, age and address.
- Draft awaiting review: pinned above the tabs when the patient agent has a reply waiting for approval.
| Tab | What it holds |
|---|---|
| General | Escalations from the patient agent, AI encounters (see AI Encounters & Kiosk), and Encounter notes. |
| Patient Context | The AI-maintained agent context for this patient, which can be edited or regenerated. |
| Messages | The SMS/WhatsApp thread, and a box to send a message. |
| Appointments | Upcoming and past bookings, and Book for this patient. See Appointments. |
| Settings | Messaging settings: who shares this patient’s phone number and how their replies are routed. |
Encounter notes
Encounter notes are the patient’s running clinical record in this service. Click New encounter note, write it, and Save note (or Update note when editing). Every save folds the note into the patient context. Notes can be deleted individually.
Messages
Type in “Send a message to this patient…”, choose WhatsApp or SMS, and send. Each message in the thread is badged by who or what sent it: Staff, Agent (the patient agent), Service agent, Emergency escalation, Encounter link or Encounter summary.
Messaging settings
Several patients can share one phone number, for example a parent messaging for two children. Messaging settings shows everyone reachable on this patient’s number, which service their replies are currently routed to, and the recent routing changes. Staff can Pin to this service so replies from that number come here, or Reset context to let routing start afresh.