As you probably already know, Finger-Ink allows in-clinic form filling and a check-in kiosk through our purpose-built iPad app.
You probably also know that we offer the ability for your patients to fill out their forms prior to their appointment, on their own devices — we call these web forms.
Web forms used to only be accessible via the same URL for any patient. Anyone with the URL could fill out the form, and Finger-Ink would do a matching process (once the patient completed the form) to figure out where to send it in Cliniko.
New in August 2025, we're introducing Identity-verified forms! 🥳
Identity-verified forms guide your patients to verify their identity by sending a special code to their email address, before proceeding to fill out a form on the web.
This comes with a range of benefits.
Benefits of identity-verified forms
Identity-verified forms mean that we know the exact ID of the patient before they start filling out the form. That means:
There's absolutely zero chance that our system will attempt to match to a different patient (which may have previously happened in cases where family members shared an email address).
The form being filled out out is pre-populated with their patient record — making form filling quicker, and obvious who the form is for (if there are many family members using one email address).
Forms can be filled out over time — 10 minutes here, 20 minutes there, etc. The patient can close the form at any time, picking up where they left off at a later time.
You, as the clinic, can see any in-progress, identity-verified web forms — so you know who's currently filling out their forms, and how far through they are.
Setting up identity-verified forms
If you've ever set up your forms to send automatically using Cliniko's confirmation / reminder templates, then you already know how to do this — there are only a few tweaks.
Check out the article on sending your forms automatically for instructions on how to set this all up.
What the patient sees
Once you've setup forms to send automatically, when a patient receives the confirmation / reminder email, they'll see the URL like this:
Clicking that link will open up the first page in the patient identity verification flow.
Step one — entering their email address
When the user first clicks that link in the email — the one that includes their patient ID — it redirects them to a different state page than if they were to click the link without their patient ID. This one asks for their email address. It might look something like this:
☝️ Privacy & Security
When the patient enters their email on this page, we never tell them if the entered email address was correct — nor do we tell them if they visit the form URL with a non-existent patient ID. Instead, we still tell them to check their inbox after they enter in an email — even when we know (behind the scenes) that we haven't sent an email.
This is slightly worse, usability-wise, than giving them nice error messages telling them that the ID or email address is incorrect. But it's a trade-off we needed to make in order to protect the privacy of both your Cliniko account, and the patient records therein.
We also have additional security measures in place to make sure we don't "accidentally" let slip when a patient ID or email is correct, or that the generated code can be brute-forced. If you're interested in more, feel free to contact us and we'll gladly share all the nerdy details. 😅
Step two — entering in the special code
After they enter the correct email address that's connected to their patient record, a special code is emailed to them. Here's an example of how the page changes when they enter in any email address (see privacy & security note above):
And here's an example of what that email might look like if they enter in the correct email address:
To continue, the patient should copy that code and paste it into the page waiting for the code, or click the button to continue, within 15 minutes (this used to be 5 but we extended it) — or they'll need to go through this flow again.
Step three — fill out the form
Once the code has been entered correctly, they'll start the form — and it will show that progress has been restored:
Any standard patient fields (such as name, address etc.) are all pre-filled, and patients can just hit the next button on those screens — saving time.
As a bonus, their progress is automatically saved in the Portal as they make their way through the form — that means they can pick up where they left off at any time.
What do you see in the Portal?
As the patient goes through their form, the Current In-progress forms page will update to show their latest progress — with the status indicator in green to show they're currently filling out their form:
If they stop filling out the form for any reason, you'll see the latest progress with a yellow indicator:
What if the patient loses their booking email?
Use the copy link button from the Current In-progress forms page to let them continue their form:
They'll need to go through the identity verification flow again — but once verified they can pick up where they left off.
Themes are respected
We know that some of you use Themes as a way to separate multiple brands you may have under one Cliniko account. Because of this, we conform to your forms' themes — both when showing the identity verification flow, and when sending the email with the code.
Wrapping up
So that's identity-verified / in-progress forms in a nutshell. Make sure you head on over to the the article on sending your forms automatically for instructions on how to set this all up.