Basic Tablet Workflow

Once you've completed your tablet setup, you are ready to start distributing tablets out to your patients to complete questionnaires and surveys!

The steps below describe the typical workflow of a clinic that uses Patient Tablets for patient forms.

  1. Add forms for the patient to fill out.

PS Suite Med Access Accuro OSCAR OSCAR Pro Other EMR
  • Add forms from the Ocean Toolbar by selecting "Add Form" or "Favourite".
  • Open the patient's chart and access the TELUS Launcher.
  • Under My Extensions, find Ocean by CognisantMD. Select Add Form.
  1. Obtain the patient's Ocean reference number.

PS Suite Med Access Accuro OSCAR OSCAR Pro Other EMR
  • Find the reference number on the Ocean Toolbar.
  1. Enter the Ocean reference number into the Patient Tablet.

    • Enter the Ocean reference number into by Patient Tablet using the on-screen keypad. This initiates the patient's session on the tablet.
    • Once initiated, hand the tablet to the patient to fill out their forms.
  2. Review the generated clinical note.

PS Suite, Med Access or Accuro OSCAR OSCAR Pro Other EMR
  • The Ocean-generated clinical note should automatically download into the patient's chart as an encounter note. From there, you can edit the note directly, if necessary.
  • If any demographics information was edited these changes should be automatically reflected in the demographics fields for this patient in your EMR.
  • If your Cloud Connect settings have been configured to save eForm notes as Documents, the Ocean-generated note will automatically download as a PDF file into the Documents area of the patient's chart.
  • If your Cloud Connect settings have been configured to save eForm notes as Encounter Notes, the Ocean-generated note will automatically download as a new Encounter Note in the patient's chart.
  • If any demographic information was updated, these changes should be automatically reflected in the corresponding fields for this patient in your EMR.

Quick Troubleshooting: Patient Tablets

Common Issues

“My tablet is not working.”

“My tablet is frozen.”

“How do I switch tablet modes?”

“My tablet is not refreshing.”

“Patient notes are not downloading.”

Diagnosis Questions

Is Cloud Connect running?

Go into the Patients view to see if appointments are syncing or sign into Cloud Connect to see if sync is in progress.

Is your Patient Tablet app up to date?

Update the Ocean Tablet App by following the steps here.

Is your WiFi working? Are other browser pages opening?

Check tablet’s WiFi settings.

Is your tablet in the correct mode?

If tablet is handed to patients, it must be in “Staff-Initiated” mode. To check, go to Ocean Portal > Tablets & Kiosks > Edit and confirm the value in the Tablet Mode dropdown.

Have you refreshed the tablet app to change modes?

Enter a series of “0s” to refresh the tablet app, which is necessary when changing tablet modes.

If your tablet is frozen, have you tried restarting the tablet?

Hold the power button and volume down button simultaneously.

Have you checked the status of the patient's notes?

Go to Ocean Portal > Patients > "Status” Column

Understanding Patient Status Icons in the Ocean Portal


Helpful Tips for Tablets

  • Connectivity Status

    • At the bottom right of the lock screen, the three “cogs” that give a simple, visual cue about the connectivity of the tablet. When the tablet is not in use, you will see it faded with “zzz” to preserve battery. However, after you touch the screen, you will see the cogs lit up. If 3 are lit up, the tablet is connected. If there are less than three, you will see an exclamation mark that indicates a problem. Touch the cogs icon to see the problem description.
  • Administration Menu

    • To access the admin menu, press the single “cog” icon or Ocean logo at the bottom left of the screen. You will be prompted for your Ocean username and password. The admin menu allows you to upgrade the Ocean Tablet app and configure application settings.
  • Deauthorizing Tablets

    • To deauthorize the tablet (remove it from your account), go to the Tablets & Kiosks view in the Ocean portal, click on the tablet you'd like to deauthorize and click "De-register" to remove a tablet from your account for billing and security purposes.
  • The Shared Encryption Key

    • To remove the patient data encryption key, select “reset secret key” to erase it from the device. You will be immediately prompted to reenter it.
    • To help your clinic remember your shared encryption key and account information, we recommend you download, print, and complete the Clinic Reference Card with the settings you just entered.
    • To learn more about the shared encryption key, please refer to "The Shared Encryption Key".

Accessing Tablet Use Data

Follow the steps below to access your site's tablet usage data.

  • Click the Menu button in the top left corner and select "Admin". From the Admin Settings page, click Reports.
  • From the "Export Audit Data" section, select "Tablet Use Log" from the Activity dropdown.
  • Select a time frame for which to download to your data by either:
    1. picking a date range,
    2. leaving the start date blank to view data from 60 days ago to a specific date,
    3. leaving the end date blank to view data from a specific date onwards, or
    4. leaving both dates blank to view all data from the past 60 days.
  • Once you click "Export", a .csv file of your tablet usage data will be downloaded, which can be opened in Microsoft Excel.

Note: Our system only maintains 60 days worth of retrospective data. Should you require access to data beyond the 60-day period, OceanMD will need to make a request to have the data formally restored. There is a starting cost of $250 for this service. In order to ensure that you are able to access Ocean data, we suggest doing a monthly export of all data that you require.


Customizing Basic Tablet Settings

  • To configure and customize your tablet settings, start by logging into the Ocean Portal.
  • Open the "Menu", and select "Tablets & Kiosks".
  • Next, click the “Edit” button for the tablet grouping you want to edit.
  • Tablet Mode

    • To set the tablet mode, use the drop-down menu found at the top of the window.
    • Staff-initiated
      A staff member enters a three-digit code in the tablet to unlock the correct forms for the patient.
      Kiosk mode
      Patients enter their health card number or swipe their health card to unlock their forms.
      Anonymous survey mode
      A single-purpose setting that allows patients to launch an anonymous survey by clicking “begin”.
  • Introduction Tab

    • The next tab allows you to customize the Introduction screen for your patients, including adding a clinic logo, a general welcome or clinic announcements, and a privacy notification.
  • Demographics Tab

    • The next tab allows you to automatically display a demographic review to all patients.
    • You can easily customize which fields are included on your demographic review by selecting the checkboxes.
    • If you don't want or need your patients to update their demographics every time, simply uncheck the "Always Show Demographics Screen" checkbox.
  • Languages Tab

    • If you are using multi-lingual forms, you will want to ensure that you have selected the appropriate supported languages.
  • Rules Tab

    • This tab will allow you to create tablet rules, which can automatically load certain forms based on certain patient criteria.
    • To learn more about setting up tablet rules, please refer to "Tablet Rules".
  • Check-In Tab

    • This tab will allow you to customize the check-in features of your tablet.
    • Check-in features including when patients get marked as arrived and preventing certain patients from being able to check-in at the kiosk.
    • Mark Patient Arrived
      If you are in kiosk mode and/or have an Accuro integration, you will also have the option of having Ocean mark the patient as "arrived" when they have entered their health number or after they've completed all of their required eForms.
      Time out after ___ seconds
      Set this to 30 seconds to reset the kiosk tablet if the patient does not interact with the kiosk for longer than 30 seconds.
      Block late check-in after ___ minutes
      Check off this box if you'd like to prevent late patients from checking in at the kiosk. Enter the time frame after the scheduled appointment time that you would like to consider as "late"
      Block check-in if ___
      Here, you can enter in a JavaScript expression to prevent patients with certain characteristics from using the kiosk to check in for their appointment (similar to tablet rule triggers).
  • Preferences Tab

    • This tab will allow you to customize completion form(s), demographics, hide the Quit button, and mark the patient as arrived.
    • Display a survey or other form after all other forms are complete
      Some clinics have a form that they want all patients to complete after completing all their other forms. This is easily customizable in the top section of this tab.
      Display updated demographic fields for patient and front desk to review
      This tab also allows you to optionally display any demographic changes on the thank you page to make it easy for staff to quickly review the changes to ensure there are no errors.
      Hide Quit button
      You can also optionally display a quit button that allows patients to quit forms without completing all the required fields. By default, tablets are set to hide the quit button (and we recommend leaving this default setting).
      Mark Patient Arrived
      If you are in kiosk mode and/or have an Accuro integration, you will also have the option of having Ocean mark the patient as "arrived" when they have entered their health number or after they've completed all of their required eForms.

Upgrading Your Tablet

There are several ways you can upgrade a tablet to the latest Ocean Tablet app:

  • Ocean Tablet App (If you are upgrading only 1 or 2 tablets):

    • Open the Ocean Tablet app on your tablet.
    • Tap on the Ocean logo (or cog) in the bottom left hand corner and enter your Ocean user credentials to access the administration menu.
    • Choose "Update Ocean Tablet". The upgrade should only take a minute but you'll need to repeat the above steps to for all the tablets that you want to upgrade.
  • Ocean Portal (If you are upgrading many tablets at once):

    • Sign into the Ocean Portal on your computer's web browser.
    • Click the "Menu" button in the top left corner and select "Tablets & Kiosks".
    • Find the tablet(s) that you want to upgrade. Click on each of them and select "Upgrade". The next time those tablets are used, they will upgrade themselves.

Please refer to "When should I upgrade my tablets?" for more information on how often to upgrade your tablets.


Tablet Rules

Tablet Rules are a powerful tool that can be used to pull up forms for patients automatically, based on some specified characteristics, such as the patient's age, sex, provider, appointment type, etc. This can be very useful in various situations. For example:

"We want patients to fill out our new registration form at their first visit only."

"We want to collect email consent from our patients once per year."

"We want to all of our female patients over the age of 50 to see our mammogram invitation."

"We want our patients booked in for a back pain appointment to fill out the Back Pain form."

"We want all of our patients to see our clinic policy."

"We want all of Dr. Smith's patients to complete the PHQ-9 form."

Below, you can learn more about how you can configure your tablet to accommodate some of the situations above. Do you have another creative trigger to automatically bring up specific forms for certain patients? Tell us about it!

To get the most out of your Patient Tablets, you may want to consider adding tablet rules that trigger forms to appear automatically. While the possibilities for creating rules are endless, the steps required to add tablet rules and some of the more commonly used rules can be found below.

How To Add Tablet Rules

  • Login to the Ocean Portal. Click the "Menu" button in the top left corner and select "Tablets & Kiosks".
  • Choose "Edit" for the tablet group that you want to add the rule to.
  • Enter the Rules tab and choose "Create Rule".
  • From the list of forms that pops up, choose the form for which you would like to create a rule.
  • Click "Choose" to add a rule line for that form.
  • Type (or copy and paste from the suggestions at the bottom of that tab) your JavaScript rule in the "Trigger" text box to define when you want this form to show up automatically.

Commonly-Used Tablet Rule Triggers:

Action Suggested eForm Rule
Conduct a patient intake for all new patients New patient registration
firstTime
Copy Rule
Show an eForm for walk-in patients New patient registration or Reason for Visit
ScriptUtil.isWalkIn()
Copy Rule
Request email consent once per year Email consent
daysSinceLastCompleted > 365
Copy Rule
Ask about smoking status for all patients over the age of 14 Smoking screen
pt.getAge() > 14
Copy Rule
Display information about the clinic policy for all patients *Develop your own or select from the shared forms library
true
Copy Rule
Conduct a PHQ9 for all of Dr. Smith’s patients PHQ-9
ScriptUtil.getKeyword('@providerName') == 'John Smith'
Copy Rule
Assess falls risk for all patients over the age of 65 once per year Canadian Staying Independent Checklist - Falls Prevention
pt.getAge() > 65 && daysSinceLastCompleted > 365
Copy Rule
Ask female patients aged 50 and older if they would like a mammogram Mammogram invitation
pt.isFemale() && pt.getAge() >= 50
Copy Rule
Collect information in advance of a periodic health exam PHE

Note: This rule functions for PS Suite, Med Access, Accuro, and OSCAR Pro integrations only.

pt.getReasonForVisit() != null && pt.getReasonForVisit().includes('PHE')
Copy Rule
Queue an eForm if the patient already has existing eForms in their queue

*Develop your own or select from the shared forms library

Often used with the "Skip On Demand eForms" Feature

pt.hasOnDemandForms()
Copy Rule

Looking for more rules?

If you have a specific tablet rule that you would like to create, but aren't sure where to start, please submit a request to our support team at: ocean.tips/support.

If you have other rules that you would like to share with the Ocean community, please contact us at info@cognisantmd.com.


Tablet Rule Support per EMR Integration

When creating Tablet Rules for use with eForms, the patient data that can be accessed and utilized as triggers by Ocean can differ between EMR integrations.

A large portion of standard patient demographic information can be used for rules in conjunction with Ocean Keywords. Keywords values can be referenced in the support guide, Using Keywords to Automatically Insert Content.

The table below gives a overview of what patient values and information are available, per EMR integration, for use with Tablet Rules.

Note:

  • PSS (API) refers to Ocean’s PS Suite integration with the TELUS API.
  • PSS (CF) refers to Ocean’s Custom Form integration for PS Suite.
  • Accuro (1.0) & (2.0) refers to the version of the API being used. 1.0 is QHR’s legacy version of the API, which may be used by some Accuro integrations.
Value PSS (API) PSS (CF) Accuro (1.0) Accuro (2.0) OSCAR Med Access
Standard Demographics via Ocean Keywords
Appointment Type / Reason for Visit × × 3
Provider Name
CPP (Medications, Conditions, Risk Factors, Allergies, Vaccinations) × ×
Lab Results / Vitals × × × × ×
Preferred Pharmacy × × × × ×
Comments / Notes Demographic 1 1 × 2
Emergency Contact / Next of Kin × × × × ×
Member Status / Rostering × × × × ×
Custom Demographic Fields × × × ×
  1. Accuro: The "ptComments" field references the "note" portion of patient's address demographic.
  2. Med Access: The "ptComments" field references the value defined in the “note” demographic.
  3. Med Access: The "reasonForVisit" field references the value defined as the Appointment Type.

Deregistering Tablets

Ocean allows you to easily deregister a tablet device if it is no longer in use.

Depending on if you plan to re-register the device in the future, you can perform a temporary deregistration via the tablet itself, or a permanent deregistration within the Ocean Portal.

In both cases, your customized tablet grouping configuration is safely saved within your Ocean Site's tablet grouping(s).

Temporarily Deregister Your Tablet

If you'd like to temporarily suspend your tablet subscription for Ocean services (e.g. your clinic is closed over the summer), you can deregister your tablet from the Ocean Tablet Administration Menu on the device itself.

    • Open the Ocean Tablet app on your tablet.
    • Tap the Ocean logo (or cog) at the bottom left corner of the main screen.
    • Enter your Ocean username and password to access the Administration Menu.
    • Note:Your Ocean user account must have Site Admin access on your Ocean Site to access the Administration Menu.
    • From the Administration Menu, select "Deregister".
    • In the Ocean Portal, you will see your tablet device listed with a '(DEACTIVATED)' status.
    • When you're ready to re-register your tablet device, simply open the Ocean Tablet app, enter your Ocean user account password, and press 'Register Tablet'.
  • Permanently Deregister Your Tablet

    You can permanently deregister your tablet device from the Ocean Portal if you are no longer using it for Ocean or it has been broken, stolen, lost.

    • Within the Ocean Portal, click the "Menu" button in the top left corner and select "Tablets & Kiosks".
    • Find the tablet device that you wish to deactivate and click "De-register".
    • You will be prompted to confirm that you want to deregister the tablet.

      Once confirmed, the tablet device will be removed from your Ocean site entirely.

To re-register a tablet device to your Ocean site that was previously permanently removed, please refer to Registering Your Tablet Through the Patient Tablet App.


Translating Your Main Intro Screen

Ocean allows you to customize the introduction/welcome screen on the tablet to display different languages based on the patient's initial language selection. Currently, the tablet provides the option to support: English, French, Arabic, Armenian, Chinese, Farsi, Filipino (Tagalog), Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portugese, Punjabi, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Tamil, Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu, and Vietnamese.

Note: To display the selected language text on the introduction/welcome screen, you will need to have your title, message, and privacy disclaimer text ready in both English and any other additional languages that you plan to support.

  • From the Tablets & Kiosks view in the Ocean Portal, click "Edit" on your tablet group.
  • Navigate to the Languages tab and ensure that any languages you intend to support are checked off.
  • Navigate to the Introduction tab and add your title, message and privacy disclaimer in English.
  • Find the ISO language code for the next language you want to include, and add the code in square brackets after the English text (e.g. to add French, you would add [fr] immediately after the English text). See the image below for an example of how this might look using English, French and Arabic.
  • Add your translated text immediately after the corresponding language code in all three sections (title, message and privacy disclaimer).
  • Repeat steps D and E for any additional languages.

PS Suite: Tablet Rules for Immunization Prompts

Note: These rules depend upon the availability of the CPP "immu" data uploaded from the EMR, which is only supported by some EMRs (e.g. PS Suite using Ocean Custom Form 3.52 or later).

The following rules can be copied and pasted into a Tablet Rule to prompt automatically.

Prompting for a Flu Shot / Influenza Vaccine Each Season (from Oct 15 until Mar 31)

(function askForFluShot() {
  function parseDate(s) { s=s.split("-"); return new Date(s[0],parseInt(s[1]-1),s[2]);}
  function latest(vax) {
    var dates = [], immu;
    for (var i = 0; i < vax.length; i++) {
      immu = pt.getCppItemData("immu", vax[i]);
      if (immu && immu.date) { dates.push(parseDate(immu.date)); }
    }
    return dates.length > 0 ? dates.sort(function(a,b){return a-b}).pop() : null;
  }
  function daysSince(d) {
    return d ? (new Date()-d) / (1000*60*60*24) : 99999999;
  }
var curMonth = (1+new Date().getMonth());
var curDayOfMonth = new Date().getDate();
var inSeason = (curMonth == 10 && curDayOfMonth >= 15) || curMonth >= 11 || curMonth <= 3;
return inSeason && daysSince(latest(["influenza virus vaccine", "flu shot"])) > 180 && daysSinceLastCompleted > 180;
})();
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Prompting for Tetanus Shot Every 10 Years

(function askForTetanusShot() {
  function parseDate(s) { s=s.split("-"); return new Date(s[0],parseInt(s[1]-1),s[2]);}
  function latest(vax) {
    var dates = [], immu;
    for (var i = 0; i < vax.length; i++) {
      immu = pt.getCppItemData("immu", vax[i]);
      if (immu && immu.date) { dates.push(parseDate(immu.date)); }
    }
    return dates.length > 0 ? dates.sort(function(a,b){return a-b}).pop() : null;
  }
  function daysSince(d) {
    return d ? (new Date()-d) / (1000*60*60*24) : 99999999;
  }
  var vaccines = pt.getCppItemKeys("immu").filter(function(key) { return key.indexOf("tetanus") >= 0; });
  return daysSince(latest(vaccines)) > 365*10 && daysSinceLastCompleted >= 365;
})();
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