DH EMR Field guides
User guide
For everyone who enters paper charts into DH EMR Field: the visit form, saving, finding and returning patients, deleting, analytics, the sync chip, the warning banners and updates. Device setup is in Getting started; the clinic's lists and forms are admin work, in the admin guide.
A visit is one patient seen on one day. The patient number is the short code the app builds by itself from the name and date of birth; you never type it.
1. The screens
Four tabs: at the bottom of the screen on a phone, in the top bar beside the name "DH EMR Field" on a tablet or computer. No sign-in, no account: the device itself is the identity.
| Tab | What it is for |
|---|---|
| Visits | Every visit on this device, with search and filters. The app opens here; find patients here. |
| New visit | Opens the visit form over whatever screen you are on. |
| Analytics | Counts and charts built from the visits on the device. |
| Settings | Device name, cloud sync, backups, and the clinic's lists and forms. Mostly for admins. |
The small chip at the right of the top bar says whether records are backed up to your cloud (section 10).
2. Entering a visit
- Tap New visit in the tab bar, or + New visit on the Visits screen.
A panel slides in (full screen on a phone, on the right on a wider screen), titled "New visit". Under it, "Patient number generates from name + date of birth" becomes "Patient number", the number and the age once both are entered.
- If a Form template list appears at the top, pick the right form. Every visit remembers which form it was filed under.
- Fill the sections. Procedures, Referral, Imaging, Surgery and Notes start closed with a "+" on the header; tap the header to open one.
- Save (section 3).
Tapping outside the panel does not close it, on purpose. Only Cancel does, and if you have typed anything the app asks: "Discard this visit? Anything you have entered will be lost." OK discards; Cancel keeps working.
Your clinic may have renamed, hidden, reordered or added sections; this order is the default. Required fields show a red "*" after the label.
| Section | Fields and rules |
|---|---|
| Visit | Site (required), Date (required), Provider. The date starts as today; change it to the date on the paper chart. A future date is refused: "Visit date is in the future." The site is remembered for the next patient. |
| Patient | Given name and Family name: required, at least two letters each, any script; spell them the same way every time, since the patient number is built from them and the date of birth. Sex (required): tap M or F, again to clear. Date of birth as DD/MM/YYYY, not in the future; if unknown, tick Estimate from age beside "Date of birth unknown" and enter an Estimated age in years. Phone: optional. Patient number: read only ("generated automatically"). |
| Vitals | Temperature in °C; outside 25 to 45 the save is refused and the message asks whether it was entered in Fahrenheit. Blood pressure like 120/80. Weight in kg. When Sex is not M, Pregnant and Breastfeeding appear, each Yes or No; choosing M clears both. |
| History | Allergies, Current medications, Past medical history. A returning patient's can be carried forward instead of retyped (section 7). |
| Chief Concern | Type in the Chief concern box or tap the complaint buttons under it ("Fever", "Cough", "Abdominal Pain"). A tap adds the complaint to the text; a second tap removes just that entry. Mix buttons and typing freely. |
| Labs | One tile per test your clinic offers: POS and NEG for a positive/negative test; for a number test ("Blood Glucose", "Hemoglobin") a box with the unit inside, and the app records a label such as "Normal" or "High" from your admin's ranges. Below: Lab comments, and a Urinalysis block with a row of buttons per parameter (leukocytes, nitrite, protein and so on). Record only tests actually done; leave the rest empty. |
| Diagnosis | Type in the Diagnosis box or tap the quick-pick buttons under it ("Malaria", "URTI"): tap to add, tap again to remove that entry. |
| Medications | One line per drug, with the dispensing quantity shown: see Medications below. |
| Procedures | Tap the buttons for what was done, for example "Wound Closure/Sutures". |
| Referral | Pick a Referral type (first entry "None"); a Scheduled date box then appears. |
| Imaging | Ultrasound type and Findings. |
| Surgery | Tick Yes beside "Surgery performed" to open the Type and Notes boxes. |
| Notes | Free text for anything else. |
| Your clinic's own sections | Admin-added questions: short and long text, a single choice from a list, several choices with checkboxes, numbers, a slider, Yes / No buttons, dates. They work like built-in fields. A blank required one refuses the save, naming section and question: "Social History: Smokes is required." |
Medications
- Pick the drug from the list; its first entry reads Select medication.
The dose box fills from the formulary if it is still empty.
- Type the dose, for example "500mg" or "2 tabs".
- Pick a Frequency and a Duration.
- Tap + Add medication for another line, or the × at the end of a line to remove it.
- Put anything else in Treatment notes at the bottom of the section.
If your clinic has set up prescription presets, a Prescription presets row at the top of the section offers one button per preset ("UTI", "Malaria >35kg"). A tap adds that preset's medication lines and treatment notes in one go. It only ever adds, never removes; edit or delete the added lines like any others.
Once a drug is chosen, the quantity to hand out appears beside the line:
| Beside the line | What it means |
|---|---|
| "20 tabs" | The dose was understood: dispense this quantity for the chosen frequency and duration. |
| "20 tabs?" | The dose could not be read, so the app assumed 1 per dose. Check it; writing the dose as a number of tabs or in mg fixes the guess. |
| "ongoing" | The duration is Ongoing, so no quantity is calculated. |
| "no qty" | The dose could not be read at all; no quantity will be recorded for this line. |
3. Saving a visit
Two save buttons sit at the bottom of the form; both read "Saving…" while the visit is written.
| Button | What happens |
|---|---|
| Save | Files the visit and closes the panel. |
| Save & next patient | Files the visit and keeps the form open for the next chart: Site, Date and Provider stay, everything else clears. A green note confirms for a few seconds, for example "Saved Grace Auma (GRAU03021988). Ready for the next patient." New visits only, never while editing. |
If something is missing or wrong, nothing is saved: a red summary such as "Check 2 fields" lists each problem ("Family name is required.", "Site is required.", "Visit date is in the future.") and the form jumps to the first field needing attention. Fix them and save again.
Rarely the device itself refuses to save; a red "Not saved" notice says why. One reads: "Your existing records could not be read from this device right now, so saving was blocked to avoid overwriting them. Please close and reopen the app; if it keeps happening, restart the device before entering more data."
Do what it says. The other reason says the device may be out of space or in a private-browsing window, and that your entry was not saved. Nothing already saved is touched in either case.
4. If the app closes mid-visit
While you type, the form keeps a working copy on the device. If the app reloads or is pushed out of memory before you save (a phone call, the camera, a long screen lock), your typing is not gone.
- Open the same visit form again.
A blue notice, "Recovered from where you left off.", names the patient and when you last typed ("Recovered for Amara Nakato, last typed at" and the time) and ends "Check every field before saving, then save as usual."
- Check every field.
- Save as usual.
It returns only on the visit it belongs to, never on another patient's form; it does not survive closing the app completely, and is cleared the moment you save or discard.
Do not lean on this net. It covers interruptions, not everything. Save each visit as soon as it is complete.
5. Finding a patient
Open the Visits tab. Four counts across the top cover the whole device, even while you search: Visits, Patients, Today and Pediatric (<18).
- Type in the search box (hint: "Search name, patient number, concern, diagnosis...") to search by name, patient number, concern, diagnosis, site or provider.
- Tap Filters to narrow the list by Site, Provider, Referral, or a date range with From and To; Reset clears them.
With filters active the button shows how many, for example "Filters (2)".
- Tap a card to open that patient's chart.
One card per patient, most recently seen first: name, latest site, latest date, sex and age, "No." with the patient number, then the latest diagnosis. Badges flag a positive lab ("Lab+"), a referral ("Referred"), pregnancy ("Pregnant") and the visit count ("3 visits").
| Instead of the list | Meaning |
|---|---|
| "No visits recorded on this device yet." | The device is empty. |
| "No visits match those filters." | Your search or filters excluded everything. Tap Reset. |
| Only the first 150 patients, with a note saying so | More than 150 patients match. Type a name to narrow the list. |
6. The patient chart
A card opens the patient's chart, a panel over the list. Here tapping outside does close it: there is nothing typed to lose.
The header shows the name, then "Patient number" with the number, sex and age, and "DOB" with the date of birth when known ("(est.)" after it when the age was estimated). Two buttons: + New visit starts a new visit for this patient; Close closes the chart.
| In the chart | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Visit count | The first line: how many visits the patient has. |
| Vitals trend | From two visits on: small graphs for temperature and weight, and a table of Temp, BP and Weight across the visits, oldest first as V1, V2 and so on, with the date under each. |
| Visit cards | One per visit, newest first: "Visit 3" and so on, the date, site and provider, and the form it was filed under. Each has Edit and Delete, then blocks for Vitals, History, Labs (positive results in red), Urinalysis, Clinical (diagnosis, each medication line with its quantity, treatment notes, procedures, imaging, surgery, referral, notes) and Additional (your clinic's own questions). Empty rows are not shown. |
7. A returning patient
When a patient comes back, do not edit their old visit. Start a new one.
- Find the patient on the Visits tab and open their chart.
- Tap + New visit.
The form opens headed "New visit for" and their name, with name, sex, date of birth, phone and patient number already filled in. Vitals, labs, diagnosis and medications start blank: today's findings must be entered for today.
If you instead start a blank visit and type a name and date of birth the app already knows, a blue Returning patient notice shows the number of previous visits, when the patient was last seen, and the last diagnosis.
Its button, Copy allergies, history and medications forward, pulls allergies, past medical history, current medications and phone from the last visit into boxes you have left empty.
Editing an old visit
Edit on a visit card opens that visit, headed "Edit visit", and Save overwrites it. Use it to fix a mistake in that day's record: a wrong weight, a missed lab result. A new visit records a new day.
Edit last month's visit to document today and last month's record is gone; the patient's visit count and history become wrong. When in doubt: fixing the past is Edit, documenting today is a new visit.
On a cloud device, saving an edit can raise one of two warnings, because another device may have touched the visit while you had it open. Read it and choose; Cancel never loses anything already saved.
| Situation | The app asks |
|---|---|
| The visit was deleted elsewhere | "This visit was DELETED on another device while you had it open. Saving now brings it back for everyone. Cancel instead if the deletion was correct." |
| The visit was changed elsewhere | "This visit was changed on another device while you had it open. Saving now replaces those changes with what is on your screen. Cancel instead to close without saving and reopen the visit to see them first." |
8. Deleting a visit
- Open the patient's chart.
- Tap Delete on the visit card.
The app asks: "Delete the 12/04/2026 visit for Amara Nakato? The visit is removed from this device and from every device that syncs with it. This cannot be undone from inside the app - only a backup taken before now can bring it back."
- Be sure it is the right visit for the right patient, then tap OK.
The Visits tab shows a bar: "Deleted the 12/04/2026 visit for Amara Nakato." with a Dismiss button.
A deleted visit does not come back on the next sync. On a cloud device the deletion itself syncs: the visit disappears from every device and stays gone. The only way back is restoring a backup file made before the deletion.
9. Analytics
The Analytics tab is built from the visits on the device you are holding; on a cloud device that includes the whole team's once sync has run. An empty device says "No visits recorded on this device yet. Charts appear here once visits are saved."
Filter by date range (From and To), Site (first entry "All sites") and Provider (first entry "All providers"); Reset clears everything.
| Tile | What it counts |
|---|---|
| Visits | Visits matching the filters. |
| Patients | How many different patients those visits belong to. |
| New patients | Patients seen for the first time, with the number of return visits underneath. |
| Referrals | Visits with a referral recorded. |
| Lab positive | Visits with at least one positive test. |
| Median age | The middle age across those visits, in years; "-" when no visit has a date of birth or estimated age. |
| Panel | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Visits over time | Daily visits and unique patients. View data under a chart shows the numbers as a table. |
| Age and sex | Who you are seeing, split female and male by age band. |
| Lab positivity | For each test, the share of tests ordered that came back positive, for example "32% (8 of 25 tested)". |
| Top diagnoses, Top medications | The most recorded diagnoses and the most dispensed drugs. |
| Visits by site, Visits by provider | Where the work happened and who did it. |
| Data quality | The share of visits with no diagnosis, no vitals, or no provider recorded; above 25% is highlighted. Check this before a donor report, and tighten up entry where a number is high. |
10. The sync chip
The chip at the right of the top bar says whether records are backed up to your organization's cloud. A device set up on its own reads Offline only, and the chip cannot be tapped. On a cloud device a tap runs a sync by hand; the label reads "Syncing…" meanwhile.
A small badge like "3 pending" means records are waiting to upload. It is hidden on a phone-sized screen; there, the Waiting to sync row on the Cloud sync card in Settings always shows the count.
| Chip says | What it means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Offline only | This device does not use cloud sync. Records stay on the device. | Take a backup at the end of every day of entry: Settings, then Download backup. |
| Connected | The cloud is set up but no sync has run yet this session. | Tap the chip to sync. |
| Offline | No internet right now. Everything still works; records save to the device. | Nothing. It syncs when the connection returns. |
| Syncing | Records are being sent and received. | Wait a moment. |
| Synced | All records are backed up to your cloud. | Nothing. |
| Sync error | The last sync failed. | Tap the chip to retry and check the connection. If it stays red, tell your admin. |
If you sync by hand and records still cannot upload, the app says "Not backed up." with how many records are still waiting and why, for example "This device is offline." or "The cloud rejected the upload or could not be reached."
It ends: "Try again when you have signal. Do not wipe or hand on this device until this clears." Those records exist only on that device: until the message stops appearing, do not wipe the device, hand it to someone else, or delete the app.
11. Warning banners and what to do
A colored banner at the top of the app means something specific and has a right response.
Amber: "Back this device up today."
The device is down to a single copy of its records: the app's own on-device safety copy has never been written or is out of date. What you can see is fine, but no second copy stands behind it.
The banner itself says what to do: "Download a backup now and at the end of every clinic day, and ask your admin to archive older visits off this device."
- Go to Settings and tap Download backup now. Keep the file somewhere safe, off the device.
- Tell your admin.
Red: "This device cannot read its records. Do not enter more patients here."
Stop entering patients here; use another device today. Your records are not gone: the app found an older on-device copy, decided it is out of date, and refused to load it so nothing overwrites anything. Saving is blocked while the banner shows.
- If you have a backup file anywhere, tap Go to Settings to restore a backup and restore it. This is the safest way back.
- Only if there is no backup file at all, tap Use the older copy instead.
The app first says how many records the older copy holds, how many this device last had, and that anything entered after that copy was made will not come back. Read it before tapping OK. If it works: "Loaded 140 records from the older copy. Take a backup now, before entering anything else." Do that.
- Tell your admin either way.
Red: "Close the other tabs."
The app is open in more than one browser tab or window on this device, and this browser cannot keep them in step. Close the extra tabs right away: records entered in one tab can overwrite the other.
"Something went wrong displaying this screen."
A screen failed to draw. The message says: "Your records are still on this device. Nothing has been deleted, and anything you had already saved is safe."
- Tap Try again.
- If it happens again, close the app completely and reopen it.
- If it still happens, take a backup from Settings on a working device before doing anything else.
"The app could not start"
The device could not open its records store at all. The screen says "Your records have not been changed or deleted." and has a Reload button.
- Close the app completely and open it again.
- If that fails, restart the device.
- If it still will not start, use a different device for today and tell your admin.
Whatever goes wrong, never "fix" it by clearing the browser's data or deleting and reinstalling the app. That erases any records that have not synced or been backed up, and nothing can bring them back. Every error screen in the app repeats this warning for a reason.
12. Updating the app
The app never updates itself: an update reloads it, and a reload mid-visit is exactly the interruption you do not need, so updating is always your choice, at your moment.
- When the bar "A new version of DH EMR is ready." appears, finish and save any open visit.
Its note reads "Updating reloads the app, so finish and save any open visit first. Saved records are not affected."
- Tap Update now.
Not now hides the bar until the app next starts, when it offers again. Take updates when offered, between charts or at the end of the day: fixes only reach the device when someone taps Update now.