💡 Welcome to Heidi Health’s tutorial series on templates! In this first article, we'll walk you through the basics of creating and using templates in Heidi, ensuring that your clinical documentation process is streamlined and efficient.
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What Are Templates in Heidi?
Templates in Heidi are powerful tools designed to help you create structured, consistent clinical notes and documents. They act as a framework, guiding Heidi’s AI to generate content in the format and style you prefer. Whether you're a beginner or an experienced user, creating a basic template is straightforward and immensely useful.
Getting Started with Template Creation
To create a template in Heidi, follow these simple steps:
Navigate to the Templates Section: Begin by going to the templates section in your Heidi dashboard. Here, you’ll find the option to create a new template by clicking "Create Template" in the top right corner of the window.
Choose Your Template Creation Method: Heidi offers three different ways to create a template:
Ask Heidi to Generate a Template: This method leverages Heidi’s AI to automatically generate a template based on your specific instructions. For instance, you might want a paediatric burns referral letter formatted in paragraphs without bullet points. By specifying these details into the bar —"Generate a paediatric burns referral letter in paragraph format without bullet points"— and hitting the next arrow, Heidi will create a template that meets your exact needs.
Use an Existing Note or Document: If you already have a clinical note or document that you frequently use, you can convert it into a Heidi-fied template. This method allows you to copy paste an existing note into Heidi where it will be converted into a generalised template by extracting the structure of your existing note without including any specifics such as name, age or diagnosis that may be present in your existing note. You can also make further edits to the converted template before saving it.
Create a Template from Scratch: For those who prefer full control over the template’s structure, you can start from a blank template and build your template step by step, specifying each section and its contents by using a combination of the 4 components (or building blocks) discussed below.
Understanding the 4 Template Components
When you create a template in Heidi, you’ll encounter 4 different components that are essential for guiding the AI in generating accurate content. You can use any combination of these components in your template to let Heidi know exactly how you would like your notes or documents to be generated. These components include:
Section Headings: Section headings organise your template and provide structure. For example, in a clinical note following the SOAP model (Subjective, Objective, Assessment, Plan), you might include headings like:
Subjective
Objective
Assessment
Plan
These section headings help the AI understand what type of information should be included under each section. A section will start off with a heading and it can further contain one, many or all template components within it.
Placeholders: A placeholder denotes text describing the type of medical information that should be displayed there. Placeholders should be wrapped in square brackets (e.g., [Patient Name], [Date of Birth]). They act as markers where specific information will be inserted when the template is used. For instance:
[Patient Name] will be automatically replaced with the actual patient’s name.
[Insert past medical history] will be populated with the details of the patient’s medical history.
By default, all placeholders should be followed by an AI instruction as described below.
AI Instructions: AI instructions guide Heidi on how to handle or manipulate certain information within the template. For example, you might want an instruction that tells the AI to only include relevant past medical history if it has been explicitly mentioned in the clinical notes. This prevents the AI from inferring context, or assuming details that haven’t been confirmed. AI instructions should be wrapped in round brackets. For instance:
(Only include relevant past medical history if explicitly mentioned in the transcript or contextual notes.)
This ensures that the generated document is accurate and only includes verified information. Note that an AI instruction can be used as a standalone component at the end of your template to provide general instructions or it can be placed next to a placeholder (or any other component) to provide instructions specific to that placeholder like below:
[Insert past medical history](Describe in detail, only include relevant past medical history if explicitly mentioned in the transcript or contextual notes.)
Verbatim Text: If there’s text that you want to remain unchanged every time the template is used, you can mark it as verbatim by wrapping it in quotation marks. Verbatim is used to denote text that must be included word-for-word in the output. This is useful for details that are consistent across all documents generated from the template. For example, you might include the referring doctor’s name, qualifications, and contact details as verbatim text. Every time the template is used, this information will appear exactly as you’ve written it.
For example, you might write:
“Dr Kieran McLeod
Emergency Medicine Specialist
MBChB (UCT)
Contact: dr.kieran@example.com"
This information will be consistent in every referral letter generated from this template.
💡 Keep in mind that Heidi probably won’t get it right the first time you use your template; it takes trial and error to create the perfect template!
Editing and Customising Your Template
Once your template is generated, you can review and make edits as needed. For example, you might notice that the date format is incorrect—perhaps it’s using the US format (MM/DD/YYYY) when you prefer the day to be listed first (DD/MM/YYYY). To correct this, you can edit the template by following these steps:
In the left-hand menu of your Heidi account, click on the ‘Templates’ tab. When you do this, you will see a list of all of your custom templates that you have created so far. Click on the three dots ‘•••’ next to the template you would like to edit, the select the ‘Edit’ option.
Heidi will then bring up your template and you can directly edit to perfect your template! In this case, you could add an AI instruction specifying the desired date format: (Use format DD/MM/YYYY for all dates)
Save these changes to ensure that every document generated from the template incorporates the edits made (in this case, the specified date format).
You can also customise other details, such as ensuring that the receiving specialist’s surname is included in the greeting of a referral letter (e.g., "Dear Dr. [Specialist Surname]").
Applying Your Template
After creating and customising your template, it’s time to put it to use. When you apply the template to a session, Heidi will take information from both your contextual notes and the transcript of your conversation with the patient to generate a complete document.
For example, if you’ve had a consultation about a child with burns, you can apply the paediatric burns referral letter template. Heidi will automatically populate the template with details from your notes, such as the patient’s name, the extent of the burns, and the specialist to whom they are being referred. The end result is a polished, professional referral letter that requires minimal editing.
💡 Finding Templates hard to get your head around? Check out our Template Community to see if one already exists for your use case. Or just use the AI template creation tool.
Creating and using templates in Heidi is a simple yet powerful way to enhance your clinical documentation process. By following these basic steps and utilising the examples provided, you can create templates that are tailored to your needs, ensuring that your documentation is both accurate and efficient.
If you’re ready to dive deeper into template creation, stay tuned for our next tutorial, where we’ll explore intermediate techniques for getting the most out of your templates.