Building interviews

An interview is a conversation, not a form. The patient opens a link and has a chat: Ona asks about the subjects you defined, in plain language, and follows up when an answer is vague or opens something worth pursuing. You get back a structured summary and clinical records on the chart, usually before the patient arrives.

This is the opposite of a Form, which shows every patient the same questions in the same order and ends in a signature. If you need fixed wording or a signature, build a form instead — see Forms or interviews — which to use.

The Interviews page

In the left sidebar, click Library, then click Interviews to open your interview templates.

Use Library (1) in the sidebar to open this area, then Interviews (2) under it to reach the templates page. Across the top are your interviews, each showing its step and subject counts with Send and Try out actions. Use New interview in the page heading action area to create one. Below is the catalog of predefined interviews, grouped on shelves and ready to import and customize.

Import a ready-made interview

On the same page, use the catalog of predefined interviews to start from a template instead of building from scratch. The catalog is grouped on shelves by category: Default, Intake, Follow-up, Mental Health, and Functional Medicine. Use the All (1) and Default (2) filters to switch between the whole catalog and the Default shelf, then use the template row (3) and Import (4) to review a template before copying it into your own set where you can edit it. Each row shows its step count and subjects so you can see the shape before taking it:

• Default Ona Interview — the built-in interview template.
• Initial Health Intake — broad first-visit interview for history, symptoms, goals.
• Follow-up Review — shorter, for progress and new concerns.
• Mental Health Check-in — structured check-in for mood, anxiety, sleep, risk.
• Functional Medicine Intake — systems-based across symptoms, digestion, hormones, lifestyle.

Note that the Mental Health Check-in covers the same ground as a screening instrument but does not produce a score or total. If you need a scored instrument, that isn't what interviews do today.

Steps and subjects

On the same page, build an interview from steps, each grouping a related area — "Reason for Visit", "Medical Background", "Lifestyle and Context". Within a step you add subjects: the specific topics to cover, each with optional details that tell Ona how to handle it.

The important distinction is that a subject is a topic, not a question. You are not writing the words the patient reads — Ona phrases the question, and phrases it differently depending on what the patient has already said. The details field is where you steer that: notes like "if they name a symptom, ask whether they've ever had a formal diagnosis for it" shape the follow-ups without scripting them. Use Name (1) for the template name, Patient-facing title (2) for the optional heading shown to the patient, Step name (3) for the section label, Subject and details (4) for the topic and guidance, and Add Step (5) to insert another step.

Break an interview into steps the way a patient thinks about their history, not the way your chart is organized. A step per topic — reason for visit, medications, lifestyle — completes better than one wall of subjects.

Use Patient-facing title if you want an optional heading shown to the patient. Leave it empty to show no title.

Steps can be reordered, and there's one predefined step type available: Medical Tests and Lab Results, whose subjects are managed automatically rather than edited by hand.

Send or test

On the same page, use each interview's row actions for Send and Try out. Use Send (1) to choose how the patient completes it, Try out (2) to walk through it yourself, and the ⋯ menu (3) for the row's other interview actions.

• Send — choose how the patient completes it: Send to patient or Create link to share, or Answer on this device.
• Try out — walk through it yourself, exactly as the patient would.

Try out runs the real conversation, not a mock-up, and writes no record — nothing lands on any patient. Always try an interview once before sending it to a real patient. It's the quickest way to catch a subject that reads oddly or a step in the wrong order.

What the patient experiences

The patient opens a secure one-time link — no sign-in, no app, expires after about two weeks and stops working once used. Patients with a portal login can complete interviews there instead. If Patient-facing title is filled in, the patient sees that heading; if it is empty, no title is shown.

They see a chat broken into sections, with section breaks between the parts of the conversation. Ona asks, they type, Ona follows up. Moving between sections isn't a "next" button they control: a Continue button appears above the composer once Ona judges the current section to be covered, and the last section ends with Finish. That means a patient can't skip past a topic — but it also means a section ends when the conversation is done, not when a fixed list runs out.

What you get back

In the left sidebar, click Patients, then click the patient's name. In the patient record, click Interviews and open a completed interview. Use Interviews (1) in the patient navigation to reach the list, then open a Completed interview (2) from that list. You'll find three tabs:

• Summary — the structured summary, with Working Well (4) and Areas of Attention (5) when available.
• Conversation — the full transcript, including anything the patient attached.
• Records — diagnoses, observations, allergies, medications and supplements extracted from the conversation, as editable records linked back to the interview that produced them.

That last tab is what a form can't do. A form's answers stay a document; an interview's answers become structured chart data.

A completed interview can show Generating insights… while the summary is still processing, or No summary available for this interview. if the result never produces a summary.

The completed interview header can include actions to export, share, or fax the result.

Interviews on the patient and consultation record are grouped under Inputs → Interviews as Scheduled, In progress, Completed, and Cancelled. Active in-progress rows can have a Copy link action on the row or in the actions menu while the link is still valid. When a row shows a link problem state, Copy link is hidden and the row surfaces Resend link instead. Resending sends a fresh link and makes the old link stop working.

Scheduled rows show Scheduled · …. Use Send now to release a scheduled interview early, or choose Cancel and confirm Cancel this interview? with Cancel interview. Keep scheduled leaves it scheduled; cancelling leaves the row in the list as cancelled.

Editing a template later

On the same page, edit a template to change what future patients get. When an interview is sent, its steps are snapshotted onto that patient's copy. Editing the template afterwards changes what future patients get, and leaves interviews already in flight or already completed exactly as they were.

Use New interview (1) to create one, the Template actions menu (2) to edit or manage a template, Preview (3) to review it, and Import (4) to copy a library template into your own set.

An interview that's attached to a service can't be deleted until you remove it from that service first.

Automatic sending

In the patient record or a visit, interviews can also be sent from the record instead of from the template list. The efficient way to use interviews is not to send them by hand at all. When you send an interview from a patient record, you can choose Send to patient, Create link to share, or Answer on this device.

Use Interviews (1) in the patient record to open the panel, then Add interviews (2) to pick templates to send. Interviews can also be selected while creating a visit — see Creating a consultation / starting a visit. Already-sent interviews show Sent and cannot be deselected from the picker. Added interviews use the same capture choices: Send to patient or Create link to share, or Answer on this device. A completed interview may later show Generating insights… while its summary is still being prepared, or No summary available for this interview. if no summary is produced.