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How to create a new Exam in Sonio

What you'll learn

  • How to create a new patient directly in Sonio.
  • How to set up the exam and start scanning.
  • How to avoid creating a duplicate patient.

How it works

When your site has no EHR feed, patients are not fed in automatically. You create the patient and the exam yourself in Sonio, starting from the New Exam button.

Sonio creates the patient (if new), the appointment, and the exam together. The exam starts in the Exam Ordered status and appears on your dashboard worklist. From there it can be scanned, and the first image moves it to In Progress.

The alternative is to start the exam directly from the ultrasound machine and let Sonio receive the images. This article covers creating the patient in Sonio.

Step-by-step: Create a patient and start an exam

  1. Click + New Exam on the dashboard (top right) or in the left side menu. This opens the Create an examination page.
  2. Under Select patient, use the search box Search by name or MRN. If the patient already exists, search and select them. If not, click Create a new patient.

  3. Under Configure your examination, set the Date, Time, and Site, the practitioner fields (Sonographer and Reading provider, or a single Practice field if your site uses dual roles), and the Exam type. Sonio pre-fills the date, time, site, and your own name where it applies; change them if needed.
  4. Click Confirm to save the exam (you return to the dashboard and it appears on your worklist), or Start now to save and go straight into the exam to begin scanning.

You'll know it worked when the exam appears on your dashboard worklist in the Exam Ordered status, or, if you chose Start now, you land straight in the exam ready to scan.

💡 Avoid duplicate patients

As you type the patient's name, Sonio shows a "We found N similar patient(s)" warning if a similar record already exists, with a clickable list (name, date of birth, MRN). If the patient is in that list, click the matching one to use the existing record instead of creating a duplicate. Most duplicate-patient problems at no-EHR sites come from creating a new record when the patient already exists.

⚠️ Wait for the page to move

After you click Confirm or Start now, wait for the page to redirect. If you see This MRN already exists, the patient already exists: go back to Select patient, search, and select them instead of creating a new record.

Common questions / troubleshooting

I get "This MRN already exists."

The MRN must be unique, so this means the patient already exists. Do not create a new record. Go back to Select patient, search by name or MRN, and select the existing patient.

I see a similar-patient warning.

When you type a name that matches an existing patient, Sonio shows a "We found N similar patient(s)" warning with a clickable list (name, date of birth, MRN). Click the matching patient to use that record. This is the main way to avoid duplicate patients at sites with no EHR feed.

Do I have to enter an MRN?

No. The MRN (optional) field is optional. If you do enter an MRN, it is saved on the patient and must be unique.

The exam is not on the ultrasound machine.

See "I cannot find the patient/appointment on the US worklist" for how to troubleshoot this.