Cliniko changed the game with custom patient fields. Our Editor supports all your custom patient fields. We respect the data types of your custom fields (e.g. check boxes, radio buttons, dates etc.) by representing them in the closest possible Finger-Ink structure. Even the "other" option is respected by offering an additional field to enter the other choice when selected.
Getting your custom patient fields into Finger-Ink
Before custom patient fields can be selected inside a Finger-Ink Form, Finger-Ink needs to know about them. This means they have to be downloaded from your Cliniko account to your Finger-Ink account.
This downloading actually happens automatically once every 24 hours, as part of our once-a-day account refresh. However, if you're actively making changes inside Cliniko, and are wanting to bring those over to Finger-Ink ASAP, you can force a refresh manually:
Adding your custom patient fields into your Form
Once your custom patient fields have been downloaded to your Finger-Ink account, you can use them through the Form Editor:
☝️ Don't forget to publish your Form after making those changes.
Understanding the custom patient field integration
As with a number of other features, our custom patient field integration isn't as simple as it seems at first glance. Here's why.
Updating Cliniko updates your Form
Whenever changes to your custom patient fields setup are downloaded from Cliniko to Finger-Ink, we check your Forms for the use of any of the changed fields. If any of the fields were updated such that they should be reflected in your Forms, then we'll update your Forms and re-publish.
☝️ Updates to custom patient fields that do not appear in any Forms will not cause any updates to your Forms.
Let's look at this example custom patient field — used to collect NDIS payment information:
Here's how that field looks when it's in a Finger-Ink Form:
If we were to then Archive the "Other" option, then force a refresh, the Form would be updated. The the "Other" option would be removed, as would the subsequent "Other" field (which would have been shown automatically if "Other" had been selected).
Custom patient fields come pre-filled on the iPad
One of the great things about custom patient fields, when contrasted with regular Finger-Ink fields such as single-line text, is that there's a specific place they go on the patient record.
This means custom patient fields are pre-filled, just like standard patient fields, when Form filling occurs in the iPad app. So if the patient arrives at a screen with a custom patient field, the value for that field on their patient record will already be input into the Form.