When generating AI-assisted clinical notes or letters, you can include a patient’s previous clinical history to provide context and improve the quality of the output. This history might include past notes, referral letters, diagnostic reports, intake forms, and outcome measures.
Providing this information helps the AI understand the patient’s background, treatment journey, and current needs, resulting in more accurate, relevant, and personalised documentation.
What Can Be Included as Clinical History?
You can include:
Previous clinical notes
Referral letters and reports
Uploaded PDFs or Word documents
Forms, such as intake forms with presenting complains, and outcome measures (e.g. DASS-21, Örebro)
This information is used by the AI to enhance the generated content, especially when it’s referenced or summarised via prompt instructions.
How to Select Previous Clinical History
For AI Clinical Notes: Use the ‘Previous Clinical History’ button to choose which documents, notes or forms you’d like to include. This gives you control over the context the AI considers during generation.
For AI Letters: You’ll be prompted to select relevant previous history before generating the letter. This may include intake forms, referral letters, diagnostic reports, or other supporting documents.
Prompt Instructions: How to Guide the AI
To ensure the AI uses the provided history appropriately, it’s important that your AI note and letter templates include specific, task-oriented instructions. These should explain what to do with any included clinical notes, documents, forms or reports.
Letter Template Examples
“Refer to the patient’s presenting complaints in the intake form and describe any changes in their condition since that time.”
“Summarise relevant findings from radiology reports or referral letters where provided.”
“Include a brief history of treatment to date based on previous clinical notes.”
Further reading: Creating PracSuite AI Letter Templates
Clinical Note Template Examples
“Compare today’s symptoms to the last consultation and describe any improvement or deterioration.”
“Carry forward ongoing concerns or treatment goals and update their progress.”
“Summarise previous medication or treatment plans if referenced in earlier notes.”
Further reading: Creating PracSuite AI Clinical Notes Templates
Forms and Outcome Measure Examples
“Highlight changes in outcome scores compared to previous submissions (e.g. DASS-21, Örebro).”
“Summarise self-reported improvement or deterioration based on recent forms.”
“Identify any high-risk responses or patterns from repeated form data.”
Best Practices
Be specific in your prompts — clearly state how past content should be used.
Keep instructions short and task-focused.
Only select relevant history to avoid overloading the AI with unnecessary information.
Including previous clinical history enables richer, more contextualised AI-generated content, whether for patient letters or clinical documentation. When used with well-crafted prompts, it’s a powerful tool to streamline workflow while maintaining clinical accuracy and depth.