You're up and running with Heidi — now it's time to make sure you're getting everything out of it. This article covers the features that make the biggest difference to the quality of your notes and the efficiency of your workflow.
Part 1 – Context, templates, and detail settings
Context
Context is the single most impactful feature for improving the quality of your notes. It allows you to upload any patient correspondence — discharge summaries, scan results, monitoring data, letters — so Heidi can incorporate that information into your note without you needing to mention it during the consultation.
For example, if you say "your scan was normal" during a session, without context your colleagues reading the note won't know what scan, when it was done, or what it showed. Upload that scan result into context and Heidi will pull through the scan type, date, and findings automatically.
💡 Note: Heidi is unable to read complex imagery such as x-rays. Outcomes and findings need to be clearly stated in text for Heidi to incorporate them into your note.
To add context:
Open the context panel within your session
Upload any relevant files — discharge summaries, investigation results, referral letters, monitoring data
Alternatively, free-text any notes directly — such as the mode you're working in, or brief clinical observations
If there are multiple people in the room, list them in context (e.g. patient name + accompanying parent or carer). Heidi will then correctly attribute who said what during the consultation
💡 Tip: You can upload context from the Heidi mobile app, and it will be available when you open the session on desktop.
Choosing the right template
One of the most common mistakes is trying to make a single template work across every consultation type. A multi-issue template that works well for a 15-minute GP appointment with three separate concerns won't give you the best output for a 30-minute single-issue education session — and vice versa.
The better approach is to build out a library of templates over time, so you can select the most appropriate one for each specific consultation.
To change your template before generating a note:
Select the template picker within your session
Browse your template library and choose the template that best fits the consultation type
Generate your note
💡 If you're not getting the output you want, changing the template is often the fix. See Getting Started with Templates for how to build and refine your template library.
Detail settings
If Heidi isn't capturing all the detail you'd like in your notes, the detail setting is the first thing to check — before assuming it's a template issue.
Find the detail setting within your session controls
Select from Brief, Goldilocks, or Detailed
If you're missing information, dial up to Detailed and regenerate your note
If your notes are too long, dial back to Brief
💡 If you've adjusted the detail setting and you're still not seeing the information you want, that's when it becomes a template issue — and you can address that by updating your template structure.
Part 2 – Tasks, personalisations, and codes
Tasks
After a session, Heidi automatically detects the letters and documents you need to generate — referral letters, patient explainers, GP letters, and more — and lists them as tasks.
To use tasks:
After your session, open the Tasks panel
Review the documents Heidi has detected and suggested
Click to generate any document — it will open in a new tab within seconds
Edit the document using Scribe if needed
When ready, copy and paste it, send it as an email, or export as a PDF or Word document
Each completed task is ticked off automatically
💡 Tip: You can also access Tasks for previous patients to make sure nothing has been missed at the end of a busy clinic.
Personalisations
⚠️ Personalisation is currently in beta. Head to Settings → Heidi Labs to toggle it on, and review all generated notes carefully to ensure they meet your standards.
Personalisations is how Heidi learns your style over time. Every edit you make to a note within Heidi — bolding headings, swapping words for abbreviations, adjusting phrasing or formatting — is observed and remembered. Over time, Heidi builds a set of rules based on your preferences and applies them automatically.
To review your personalisations:
Navigate to the Personalisations section within your note panel
Review the observations Heidi has recorded
Click through any observation to see the evidence behind it
Mark any incorrect observations as inactive, or leave accurate ones as active
💡 Important: For Personalisations to work, edits need to be made within Heidi — not in your EHR after copying the note across. The more you edit within Heidi, the faster and more accurately it learns.
Coding
If you need diagnostic codes, Heidi can generate them automatically from your consultation.
Select the Coding panel in the bottom right of your session
Choose your coding set — for example, ICD-10
Heidi will return a stack-ranked list of codes, sorted by high, medium, and low relevance
Confirm all suggested codes at once, or manually select only the ones you want
Confirmed codes are automatically added to the bottom of your consultation note
Part 3 – Patient profiles, language settings, and Ask Heidi
Patient profiles
⚠️ Enhanced patient profile features — including auto-detection of medications and allergies — are currently available as an early access feature. To enable them, head to Settings → Heidi Labs and toggle on Patient Profiles. Please review all detected information carefully to ensure it is accurate before use.
Heidi automatically detects and saves key patient information — medications, allergies, past history, date of birth, address, and other identifiers — to a patient profile. This information is then pulled automatically into any referral letter or document you generate, so you're not manually filling in patient details every time.
For returning patients, all previously captured information is carried through and kept up to date on the profile. You can also select previous sessions in context, making all prior notes and uploaded documents available at the click of a button.
To set up and use patient profiles:
After a session, confirm that Heidi has detected and saved the correct patient information
For returning patients, open their profile before or during the session to review carried-through information
In the context panel, select previous sessions to pull in prior notes and context
Note status
If you're working in a collaborative practice environment, note status lets you and your colleagues know where a note is in the review process.
Draft — mark a note as drafted to indicate it hasn't been fully reviewed. Colleagues will see this status and know to exercise extra caution when referencing it.
Approved — mark a note as approved once you've reviewed and finalised it, so colleagues can rely on it with confidence.
To update note status, select the Status button within the note and choose the appropriate state.
Language settings
If you practice in multiple languages, Heidi supports up to three input languages and allows you to set a separate output language for your notes.
To configure language settings:
Navigate to your language settings
Select up to three input languages that Heidi will listen for during a session
Select your preferred output language for generated notes
If you work in a linguistically diverse setting, enable Auto-detect — Heidi will automatically identify the languages spoken and transcribe accordingly, outputting in your chosen language
Upcoming patients (non-integrated)
If you're using Heidi without an EHR integration, you can upload your appointment book at the start of the day — either as a screenshot or a CSV file. Heidi will create a session tab for each patient, ready to go, so you can simply click and start without creating sessions manually for every appointment.
Navigate to the Upcoming patients section
Upload a screenshot or CSV of your appointment book
Heidi will generate a session tab for each patient, pre-labelled and ready to use
Using Evidence during a consultation
You don't need to leave your session to access clinical evidence. Using the Ask Heidi chat bar, you can ask clinical questions in real time — before the patient leaves the room.
Examples of what you can ask:
"Am I missing anything in the initial management plan?"
"Have I followed the appropriate guidelines for this presentation?"
"What's the next best antibiotic if my patient has a penicillin allergy?"
"Calculate the renal-adjusted dose for this patient"
Heidi will run an evidence search, show you the guidelines and resources it has reviewed, and give you a summary — all without leaving the session.
You can also use the Ask Heidi bar to make quick edits to your note — for example, "un-bold the headings" — and Heidi will regenerate the note with your requested changes applied.
💡 Availability note: Using Evidence during a consultation via the Ask Heidi chat bar is not currently available for users in the UK, EU, or South Africa. For users in other regions, in-session Evidence is available on paid plans — free plan users are limited to 10 uses per month. Evidence outside of sessions remains available on all plans and in all regions.