A
Andrew Scott
Feature Request: Ward Rounds Mode for Heidi
Summary
Heidi works exceptionally well for outpatient consultations, but ward rounds have a fundamentally different workflow that the current Upcoming / Past structure doesn't accommodate. I'd like to propose a dedicated
In-patients
mode — a third top-level tab alongside Upcoming and Past — designed around the way doctors actually run a ward round.
The problem
On a ward round, the clinician moves through a list of patients in a defined physical order (by ward, by room), often returning to the same patients across many days. Each encounter needs to be informed by the previous day's note, recent investigations, and correspondence. At discharge, all of this needs to be synthesised into a discharge summary. Currently this would require creating a new "appointment" for each patient every day, with no continuity, no spatial organisation, and no way to carry context forward.
Proposed solution: an "In-patients" tab
A third tab "Inpatients" next to
Upcoming
and
Past
, with the following structure and features.
  1. Patient list, organised by location
  • A list of all current inpatients under the user.
  • Sub-filters by
    ward
    (e.g. St. Camillus, St. Joseph's) or
    Emergency Department
    .
  • Within each ward, patients can be arranged into
    customisable location slots
    — e.g. Room 1, Room 2, Room 3, Bay A, etc. — that the user defines.
  • Patients can be
    dragged and dropped
    between rooms/locations to match the physical layout of the ward and to re-order them for the round.
  1. Patient cards with persistent context
Each patient slot contains:
  • Core demographics:
    name, chart number / MRN, date of birth
    .
  • A
    context field
    identical in behaviour to Heidi's existing context box — paste in past medical history, medication list, recent letters, results, etc., or type directly.
  • The context
    persists across days
    so it doesn't have to be re-entered each round.
-Can easily drag and drop or copy and paste images of test reports to add to the record
  1. Live ward round consultation
When the user opens a patient on the round:
  • A small,
    visible summary card
    showing key context (problem list, PMH, recent results and current Plan for the patient) remains on screen while recording — so the clinician can glance at it during the conversation.
  • Previous notes
    from earlier days of the admission are visible in a side panel, scrollable while the consultation is in progress.
  • Heidi
    continuously records
    the bedside conversation, just as it does in clinic.
  • At the end, Heidi uses the accumulated context (previous notes + new recording + recent correspondence/results) to generate
    today's progress note
    .
  1. Automatic discharge summary
When the patient is discharged:
  • Heidi generates a
    discharge summary
    drawing on the full admission — all daily notes, context entries, results, and correspondence stored in that patient's record.
  • The user can edit before finalising, as with current notes.
  • On discharge, the patient is moved to
    Past Patients
    so the full admission record is preserved and searchable.
  1. Admit / discharge by drag-and-drop
  • Admit
    : drag a new patient into a ward / room slot, or create from a template.
  • Discharge
    : drag the patient to a "Discharge" zone — triggers the discharge summary workflow and archives the record.
  • Same gesture for transferring between wards/rooms.
  1. Customisation
  • User-defined wards and room labels.
  • User-defined templates for progress notes (e.g. SOAP, problem-based) and for discharge summaries.
  • Ability to reorder the round each morning by drag-and-drop for location in case patients moves location without losing patient context.
7. iOS app integration
This is the most important piece for actual usability on the round — most consultants do rounds with a phone, not a laptop. Full feature parity on the iOS app, with:
  • Quick-glance patient cards while walking between rooms.
  • Tap-to-record on each patient.
  • Offline tolerance, syncing when back on Wi-Fi (hospital connectivity can be patchy).
-This would all work best on a tablet such as Ipad
Be able t than just copy and paste the current day ward round note into each patient with customisable templates and/or integrate with EHRs to do this automatically after checking for accuracy.
Why this matters
This would turn Heidi from an outpatient tool into a true inpatient companion. Ward rounds are some of the most note-heavy, error-prone parts of hospital medicine, and the existing dictation/scribe products on the market don't handle the spatial and longitudinal nature of inpatient care well. A well-designed Ward Rounds mode would be a significant differentiator and would meaningfully reduce the documentation burden on hospital consultants and registrars.
Happy to be a tester / give feedback once any version of this is in development.