Ona Assistant

Ona Assistant is a chat assistant with context of your organization and, when you're on a patient or visit, of that record too. You ask in plain language; it answers from what's actually in your Ona data.

Opening the Assistant

The Assistant launcher sits at the bottom-right of the app. Click it to open the panel.

The panel greets you with "How can I help you today?" and an Ask anything box. Below the input, context chips show what the Assistant is currently scoped to — on a visit for Emily Carter, the chips read Consultation and Emily, so it already knows which visit and patient you mean. There's also Attach files and a Legal information note.

The context chips are the thing to watch. They tell you what "this patient" or "this visit" refers to before you ask — so you're not guessing whether the Assistant knows who you mean.

Asking about a patient

With a patient in context, you can ask directly about them. Ask "What is this patient's main concern and diagnosis?" and the Assistant answers from the chart.

In the example, it responds with the main concern (quoting the visit — "I struggle with painful periods"), the coded diagnosis (Dysmenorrhea, active), and another problem-list item (Vitamin D deficiency, with the supporting lab value and date), then offers a follow-up: "Would you like a brief timeline of how this concern was evaluated across her recent visits?"

That answer is drawn entirely from the patient's record — the reason for visit, the diagnosis codes, the observations. It's reading the chart, not guessing.

What you can ask

Two broad kinds of question:

• About your organization — practice-level questions where the Assistant has org context.
• About a specific patient or visit — when you're on that record, so the context chips are loaded.

Useful patterns: summarise a patient's history, pull together what happened across recent visits, ask what a result means in context, or get a starting point for a note or plan.

Verify before you rely

The Assistant is a fast way to get oriented, not a substitute for reading the record yourself. It surfaces and summarises what's in the chart, and like any AI summary it can miss nuance or over-simplify. Treat its answer as a well-informed starting point — check it against the source before you act on it clinically, exactly as you'd review an AI-drafted note before signing (see Reviewing and signing an AI-drafted note). The Legal information link in the panel is worth reading once for the specifics.

In short

Ona Assistant puts a question box over your practice's data. The context chips tell you what it's looking at; the answers come from your records. It's quickest for orientation and summary — the things that would otherwise mean clicking through several screens — with the same review-before-you-trust discipline you'd apply to any AI output.