Messages is a text conversation with a patient: you write from the dashboard, the patient answers in the portal or in the mobile app. It suits short matters between visits — "can I exercise with a cold", "please send me the clinic address".
The conversation is personal: you see only your own threads with patients, and your colleague has theirs. The same patient can hold parallel conversations with two people on the team, and those are two independent threads.
How to do it
Open or start a conversation
The left column is the conversation list with an unread counter; the Search conversations... field narrows it by name. You start a new conversation with New Message — type at least two characters of a name and pick the patient from the suggestions.
Unread messages are also flagged by the bell in the top bar, with a Latest messages preview.
Write and send
The field at the bottom takes up to 5000 characters. Enter sends, Shift+Enter starts a new line. A sent message appears in the conversation immediately; if it never reached the server, the bubble shows Failed — Retry.
Opening a conversation marks the patient's messages as read and clears the counter.
Translate when the patient writes in another language
Under a foreign-language message you will find Translate, and above the conversation Translate all. Show original goes back to the source text, so the original is never lost.
Every practitioner has a free monthly character allowance; once it runs out, translation draws AI credits. Before it runs you see how many characters it covers.
Know when the patient will see the message
A patient with the mobile app installed gets a New message from … notification as soon as you send. A patient without the app sees the message only after signing in to the portal — Heltio will not send them an SMS or an email about it.
What is not here
- This is not an internal team chat. Every conversation has a patient on the other side and is fully visible to them. Do not put notes meant for colleagues here — those belong in the clinical note.
- This is not an urgent channel. There is no guarantee the patient reads a message within any given time. Handle urgent matters by phone.
- A message cannot be deleted or corrected once sent. The conversation is a record and follows the retention rules.
When something doesn't work
Failed — Retry
What this means: The message never reached the server — usually because the connection dropped.
No patients found.
What this means: The person you are looking for does not exist in this clinic, or the name is spelled differently.
No conversations yet.
What this means: You have no conversations yet — the list shows only your own threads.
Translation failed
What this means: The translation service did not answer, or AI credits ran out.
Who has access
Practitioner Clinic AdminConversations are held by practitioners and the clinic admin. Reception sees the conversation list but cannot send a message. The text box stays active for them, and the refusal only arrives on the attempt to send — if reception is to reply to patients, they need a role with documentation rights.
Sending a message leaves a trace in the audit log.
Related
- Messages in the portal — the same conversation through the patient's eyes.
- Push notifications — how the patient learns about a reply.
- Data retention — how long the conversation record is kept.
Related features
Push notifications
Browser push for the team and mobile-app push for the patient — who gets what, who turns it on, and what push does not cover.
Email to a patient
Which emails Heltio sends patients on the clinic's behalf, how to turn them on and off, and what you can change in them.
Messages in the portal
The written conversation between a patient and the clinic in the Patient Portal — a separate thread per practitioner, the body chart as the only attachment, notifications both ways.
Patient record
The file of a single person — personal details, clinical profile, note history, measurements, consents, guardians and settlements, in the tabs down the left-hand side.