Building forms

A form is a fixed document the patient reads, answers and signs. Every patient sees the same blocks in the same order — that's the whole point of it. If you want questions that adapt to the patient's answers, you want a questionnaire instead; see Forms or questionnaires — which to use.

The Forms page

Go to Library → Forms — "create and manage static forms with questions, choices and free-text answers".

Like Questionnaires and Consents, the page has two parts: your forms along the top with New Form, and below them a Library of predefined templates "ready to import and customize".

Import a ready-made form

Three templates ship with Ona:

• Patient Intake Form — a long first-visit form covering basics, medical history and a conditions checklist.
• Medical History Questionnaire — focused history, shorter than the full intake.
• Post-Visit Feedback — a handful of fixed questions for after the visit.

Preview reads one; Import copies it into your own set where you can edit every word.

Read an imported template all the way through before you send it. These are starting points shaped around a general practice, and the intake template in particular carries assumptions — an exclusion-criteria section, a weight-management slant — that may not match how you work.

Blocks

Forms are built from blocks, added from the Add Block dropdown. There are five kinds:

• Text — not a question. A block of content the patient reads: instructions, a policy paragraph, a section heading. Supports markdown.
• Single choice — pick one option.
• Multiple choice — pick any number of options.
• Short answer — a one-line input.
• Long answer — a multi-line box for anything that needs a sentence or two.

Every answerable block has a Required to submit toggle. Required questions block submission until they're answered, and the patient is told how many are outstanding.

That's the entire set. There are no date pickers, number fields, file uploads, rating scales or calculated fields, and no conditional logic — every patient sees every block. If a form is starting to need branching, it's usually a sign the content belongs in a questionnaire.

The builder

New Form opens a two-pane editor: your blocks on the left, a live preview of exactly what the patient will see on the right. Reorder blocks with the up/down chevrons and delete from the block's own controls.

Give the form a Title and a Description — the description is shown to the patient under the title, so use it to explain why they're filling this in.

Each template has an active/hidden toggle ("Template is active" / "Template is hidden from use"). Deactivate a form you no longer send rather than deleting it — previously submitted copies keep their own snapshot either way.

Watch the preview pane as you build. Almost every confusing form is obvious the moment you read it in the patient's column instead of the editor's.

Sending a form

Add a form asks you to pick a template, then choose how the patient fills it in. There are three ways:

• Send to patient — notifies them by email and/or SMS with a link they open on their own device.
• Fill on this device — hands your tablet or laptop to the patient right now, in a locked-down view. The staff member who witnessed it is recorded on the submission.
• Copy link — copies the same secure link so you can share it however you like.

The link is a secure one-time link: no sign-in, expires after about two weeks, and stops working once it's been used. Patients with a portal login can also complete forms from Forms in the portal.

What the patient sees

Submitting a form is a deliberate three-step ceremony — Review, Agree, Sign:

1. Review — they must scroll to the end of the document. A progress pill shows how much is left, and the continue button stays disabled until they've read it and answered every required question.
2. Agree — they accept the electronic-signature agreement.
3. Sign — they draw a signature, then submit.

There is no unsigned shortcut: every form submission carries a signature. There's also no draft autosave — answers live in the browser until submit, so a patient who closes the tab halfway will start again.

Signatures and the audit trail

This is the part that makes a form worth using instead of a questionnaire. At submission Ona records:

• the drawn signature, as both stroke data and an image,
• a SHA-256 hash of the exact document the patient saw — title, description and every block,
• the timestamp, the IP address and the browser used,
• the patient's acceptance of the e-signature agreement.

The hash is computed independently by the browser and the server, and a mismatch is rejected outright with "Form document changed. Please reload and review again." A signed form can't quietly disagree with what was signed.

On the clinician side this shows up as a collapsible Electronically signed bar on the completed form — signature, document hash, audit trail.

Because each submission snapshots its own copy of the document, editing a template later never alters a form somebody has already signed.

Where submitted forms live

Forms appear on the patient record and on the consultation under Inputs → Forms, grouped into Pending and Submitted. Pending rows carry a Copy link action if the patient lost the email.

Opening a submitted form renders the document with the patient's answers inline and the signature and audit details at the foot. Forms you no longer need on the active list can be archived and restored later.

When a form is submitted, the person who sent it and the visit's assigned clinician are notified in-app, and by email if that's enabled — see Notification settings.

There is no PDF export or print view for forms today, and no cross-patient reporting on form answers.

Automatic sending

As with questionnaires and consents, the efficient path is not to send forms by hand. Attach a form to a Service and it's auto-selected whenever that service is added to a visit — see Setting up services. Booking the appointment sends every attached questionnaire, form and consent in a single email to the patient.

Forms can also be picked ad hoc while creating a visit; see Creating a consultation / starting a visit.