Programs are the list of exercises a patient gets to do between visits. A program has a fixed structure — week, day, exercise — and every exercise has its own prescription: sets, reps, duration, weight, rest and tempo. The patient sees in the portal exactly the values you type.
Do not confuse a program with a treatment plan. A plan describes therapy phases and the criteria for moving between them; a program is the concrete exercises to do at home. A program can be linked to a plan, but each also works on its own.
How to do it
Create the program
On the Programs list click Create Program. Fill in the Program Title, pick the Patient, the Program Type (Training, Diet, Treatment, Custom), the Difficulty Level and the Frequency. The Est. Duration (min), Description / Instructions and Link to Treatment Plan fields are optional.
The new-program form has section headings down the left and the save button at the bottom. 1 is the heading of the first section, where you give the title and the patient; 4 is Save Program — only after that does anything exist that weeks can be added to.
Lay out the weeks and days
Add Week creates the next week of the cycle, Add Day the next day within that week. Inside a day you click Add Exercise. You can type an exercise in by hand or pull one in with Pick from library from the exercise catalogue — then the name, description and instructions fill themselves in.
You change the order of exercises within a day by dragging the handle on the card.
Fill in the prescription
Every exercise card has Sets, Reps, Duration, Weight, Rest and Tempo fields (a four-phase notation, 2-1-2-0 for instance). Coaching Cues are what the patient reads while doing the exercise; Patient Notes are for individual caveats, such as an adjustment to the load.
Tick Optional exercise if it should not count towards completing the program.
Attach a video or a material
The Add video button offers three sources: Materials Library, URL (a YouTube or Vimeo link) and Upload. Separately, through Add Material, you attach a PDF or a photo from the materials library.
Limits: 5 attachments per exercise, of which at most one video, and 10 attachments per program.
Build progression by copying a week
Copy Week moves every exercise from one week into another and lets you raise the load in the same move: +N reps or +N weight. If the target week already has exercises, Heltio tells you — copying adds to them rather than replacing them.
Separately, each exercise has Progresses from, Progression Level and When to progress fields — they build a chain of harder variants, visible on the Progression tab together with the Advance to Next Level button.
Activate the program
A saved program has the Draft status. On the program card click Activate — only from that moment does the program count as running: it enters the adherence reports and the weak-week reminders.
| Status | What you can do next |
|---|---|
| Draft | Activate, Archive |
| Active | Pause, Mark complete, Archive |
| Paused | Resume, Archive |
| Completed | Archive |
| Archived | Unarchive — returns it to Draft |
The Export PDF button prepares a printable version for the patient.
When something doesn't work
Program title is required
What this means: Saving without a program title.
Please select a patient
What this means: The program is not a template, so it has to have a patient assigned.
Program was created but some exercises could not be saved. You have been redirected to the edit page to fix missing items.
What this means: Saving the program succeeded but some exercises did not go through — usually a connection that dropped mid-save.
You have unsaved changes. If you leave now, all changes will be lost.
What this means: Leaving the editor before saving.
Only one video attachment per exercise item.
What this means: The exercise already has a video attached.
Failed to generate PDF. Please try again.
What this means: Preparing the file broke off on the Heltio side.
Who has access
Clinic Admin PractitionerPrograms are run by practitioners and the clinic admin. Reception and a view-only account neither create nor edit programs.
Programs and the exercise catalogue are part of the package that includes the exercise library. A clinic on a lower plan sees a feature-unavailable message instead of the list.
Related
- Program templates — how not to build the same program a second time.
- Program adherence — what comes back from the patient and where to see it.
- Materials library — videos and PDFs attached to exercises.
- Exercise catalogue — where the ready-made descriptions and instructions come from.
Related features
Program templates
A program saved with no patient, ready to be assigned: two assignment routes — quick, and exercise-by-exercise customisation — plus sharing a template with the rest of the clinic.
Materials library
A shared home for the clinic's PDFs, videos, images and links: upload something once, then attach it to an exercise in a program, to a treatment-plan phase and to a visit summary.
Program adherence — what the patient does between visits
The Compliance tab on a program card: the overall rate, a per-exercise breakdown with average pain and difficulty, a 16-week activity heatmap, and a reminder when the week looks bad.
Exercise catalog
The practice's collection of exercises with photos, video, instructions and a default prescription — the source you build patient programs from.
Treatment plans and phases
A course of therapy split into phases with advancement criteria, goals measured by outcome measures and a discharge at the end — run for one patient and visible to them in the portal.