Documents overview
Documents keeps a patient’s files with their record: scans, X-rays, clinical photos, referral letters, outside lab reports, consent forms and ID papers. Every file becomes a document with a title, a category, a date, and optionally links to the visits or treatments it belongs to.
What you can store
Section titled “What you can store”| Kind | Files |
|---|---|
| Image | JPEG, PNG, GIF and WebP. Meddesk makes a small preview of each image. |
| PDF documents, shown inside Meddesk. | |
| DICOM | Medical imaging files (.dcm). They can be downloaded and opened in a DICOM viewer; Meddesk doesn’t preview them. |
Meddesk checks what a file really is from its contents, not its name, so a renamed file of another kind is refused with “This file type isn’t supported.” Each file can be up to 25 MB, unless your clinic’s administrator set a different limit (up to 200 MB). The upload page shows the current limit.
Files are kept privately: only signed-in staff with access, and the patient (for shared documents), can open them.
Where documents appear
Section titled “Where documents appear”| Place | What you see |
|---|---|
| The patient’s Documents tab | Every document of the patient, with filters and bulk actions. See Viewing and managing documents. |
| An appointment’s or a treatment’s page | A Documents section listing the documents linked to it, and an Upload document action. |
| The patient’s Overview | A Documents section in Patient 360, with the latest thumbnails and counts by category. |
| The patient portal | Documents you chose to share. See Sharing with the patient. |
Categories
Section titled “Categories”Categories group documents, each with its own colour. New clinics start with:
Imaging & X-rays, Clinical photos, Outside reports & results, Referral letters, Consent forms, ID & personal documents, Other.
To manage them, open Settings › Documents (needs Manage document categories):
- Add category: a Name (in each of your clinic’s languages) and a Color.
- Edit category: change the name or colour, or turn Active off. “Inactive categories stay on existing documents but can’t be chosen for new ones.”
- Drag a category by its handle to change the order categories appear in.
A document doesn’t need a category. Without one it shows as Uncategorized.
Links to visits and treatments
Section titled “Links to visits and treatments”A document can be linked to one or more of the patient’s appointments and, with the Treatments module, treatments. A linked document also appears in the Documents section of each linked record. You can only link records of the same patient, and only kinds of records you’re allowed to see.
Sharing with the patient
Section titled “Sharing with the patient”Turn on Show in the patient portal on a document to share it: “The patient can see and download it in their portal.” Documents are not shared unless you turn this on. You can change it any time, one document at a time or in bulk.
In the portal, the patient sees My documents with each shared document’s title, category, date and description, and can open or download it.
Opening is recorded
Section titled “Opening is recorded”Every time someone opens or downloads a document’s file, Meddesk records who and when, whether it was staff or the patient in the portal. Staff with Delete patient documents can see this list, Who opened this, in the document viewer. Previews (thumbnails) aren’t recorded.
Permissions
Section titled “Permissions”| Permission | Allows | Starts on |
|---|---|---|
| Read patient documents | See the Documents tab and sections, open and download files. Also needs Read patient profiles: without access to patient records, documents stay hidden. | Doctor, Nurse, Receptionist, Manager |
| Upload patient documents | Upload documents. Also edit the documents you uploaded. | Doctor, Nurse, Receptionist, Manager |
| Edit patient documents | Edit any document: title, category, date, description, links, portal sharing. | Doctor, Nurse, Manager |
| Delete patient documents | Delete documents, and see who opened a document. | Manager |
| Manage document categories | Add, edit and reorder categories in Settings › Documents. | Manager |
Deleting a patient
Section titled “Deleting a patient”Documents are part of the medical record. A patient who has any documents, including deleted ones, can’t be deleted: “This patient still has 3 documents. Documents are kept for the medical record and can’t be deleted with the patient.”
Reports and dashboard
Section titled “Reports and dashboard”- The Patient documents data source lists every document with its title, category, date, whether it’s shared in the portal, who uploaded it and when, and the patient.
- The Patients data source gains a Documents count, and Staff gains Documents uploaded.
- The dashboard’s overview widget shows the number of Documents, for staff who can read them.
- The AI Assistant can list a patient’s documents (titles, categories, dates and links, not the file contents).