Help / Patients

Asking a question

Ask, at the end of the search bar on Start and under the name on a patient's record, for those who hold the AI Access privilege, and at the top of Help for everybody.

Ask puts a question to an AI that can look things up in Fedelsoft for you: how much was spent on pharmacy last month against the month before, how many appointments there were in September, what an expense was for. Type the question in the search bar and press Ask, or press Enter without choosing a result. The answer appears under the bar as it is written.

The AI can only find what you could find yourself, through the same searches and the same rules, so it never sees a record you could not open. Every figure it gives comes from what it looked up. Where it cannot answer, it says so rather than guessing. It cannot yet read letters, prescriptions, email or clinical notes.

It reads a patient's quotes and invoices line by line, with the figures their pages show. Asked what a patient was quoted, what was invoiced, or whether they are having a procedure, it puts the quote, the invoice and the operation side by side and names every difference: a line quoted and not invoiced, a fee that changed, a fee no longer charged. Where the operation does not record the procedure, the answer says it is worked out from the billing.

It can also follow an operating list to its cases. Name a list by its date, its surgeon or its hospital, such as the total hospital fee for a surgeon's list on a given day, and it names every case with its patient, procedure and surgeon, and adds up the surgeon's, anaesthetist's and hospital fees from the invoices linked to each operation. A fee an invoice does not charge is named as not charged rather than counted as nothing, a cancelled case is left out of the totals, and a case you cannot open is counted without being named. You see only the fees you would see on each patient's record.

Under every answer is Records used: every record its figures came from, the first dozen shown and the rest behind a fold. Press one, or a record named in the answer, and its details open in place under the answer, with Open to go to its page and put it right if it is wrong. An answer that gives money with no record behind it is not shown at all.

Spending is counted by expense date, and the answer says so. Where an invoice is dated after the period you asked about but its reference says it covers that period, such as a laundry invoice for August and September dated in October, the answer names it, with its amount, as left out by date but described as covering the period. It is never added into the total, and the answer never says there was no spend while one exists.

The AI can read the invoice or receipt attached to an expense you can open, to see what it says, such as how an invoice for two months divides between them. What it works out that way is marked read from the attachment, please check, shows the lines or dates it relied on, and is never a figure Fedelsoft holds; where the attachment does not make it clear, it says so. Nothing is ever changed.

On a patient's record, and on the page of one of their appointments, Ask sits under the patient's name as a single button; press it and the button widens into a box to type in, and Escape on an empty box shrinks it back. It is about that patient only: "this patient", "she" or "he" means the patient whose record is open, and it will not look up anybody else from there. Besides their quotes, invoices and operations, it reads their letters, which are the consultation notes, their consultation transcripts, treatment notes and operation notes, and their prescriptions if you are a prescriber. Ask, for example, what was said about a seroma, which antibiotics they have had, or what was planned at the last consultation. It reports what is written, with who wrote it and when, and names each note under the answer; it adds no clinical opinion of its own, and where a letter and a transcript disagree it says so. It reads only what you could read by opening the record yourself, and the conversation is listed in Your questions under the patient's name.

Ask is also at the top of Help, which the Help button opens on every page, for everybody at an organisation that has it. Type how to do something, such as how to cancel an operation, and press Ask or Enter: the answer says which page to go to and what to press, and knows which page you opened Help from, so "this" means that page. Without the AI Access privilege the answer comes only from this guide, with the topics it came from underneath to open; it cannot see any record. With it, the box is the whole of Ask, as on Start, and it reads the guide as well. For this page, under the box, opens the guide's own topic for the page you came from. Questions asked in Help count against the same monthly allowance.

Ask can also say when you are free. Ask when you are free, for a day, a week or a month, and it lists every stretch of your working hours with nothing on your Fedelsoft diary, whole free days as whole days. It can also find a time for a meeting. Say who should meet, and it looks at each person's Fedelsoft diary at your organisation, their clinics, lists, meetings and days off, inside the hours they usually work, and lists the times everybody is free, each with Reserve beside it. Nothing is booked until you press Reserve: that makes the meeting, with the title in the box, and puts everybody on it, so it appears on their schedule. Open the meeting and press Invite everybody to send each person a calendar invitation by email. Diaries kept outside Fedelsoft are not seen when the times are found.

Ask a follow-up in the box under the answer and it carries on from there; ask one question at a time, and the next when the answer has finished. New starts a fresh conversation. Your questions lists your earlier conversations; they are yours, and nobody else sees them in the panel. Every question is kept with what was looked up, any attachment read, and what it cost.

Ask is only there when your organisation has AI turned on in Settings. Under the panel's heading is what your questions have cost this month against your own allowance. When you reach your allowance, or the organisation's spending for the month reaches its cap, the panel says so and takes no more questions until the month turns or a Director raises it.