How Charthalo works
From the first words of the encounter to a structured SOAP note waiting for your review — here's what Charthalo does, what it doesn't do, and why the workflow adds under two minutes to your day.
Step-by-step workflow
Open the tab. The rest is automatic.
At visit start, open Charthalo in your browser and grant microphone access once. That's the full setup. No dictation start/stop, no push-to-talk, no trigger phrase, no dedicated hardware.
Audio is streamed through an encrypted pipeline and processed in real time. Raw audio is not stored past the active session — once the transcript is generated, the audio stream is discarded. A patient consent reminder appears at session start; if the patient declines, simply don't open Charthalo for that visit.
experiencing these symptoms?
Pt: About three weeks now...
Dr: Any fever or chills?
Pt: No, just the congestion and the eyes...
The transcript becomes a SOAP note in real time.
While you're still with the patient, Charthalo parses the transcript into standard clinical sections: chief complaint, HPI narrative, review of systems, examination findings you verbalize, and a full assessment and plan including ICD-10 code suggestions.
The model distinguishes between patient-reported history, clinician observations, and clinical decision-making — without requiring you to structure your questions in any particular order or adopt a scripted visit style. It works with how you already talk.
Review the draft. Approve or edit. Done.
The note is ready when the visit ends. Read it, adjust any section you want — clinical judgment remains yours — then approve. Copy the finalized note into your EHR or paste it directly into your existing template.
No submission queue, no batch processing delay. The draft adds under two minutes to your encounter workflow. Charthalo does not submit notes to the patient record — you do. That step stays entirely with you.
A complete SOAP note from a real ambulatory encounter
This is what Charthalo produces. All four sections populated. Assessment includes ICD-10 codes. Plan includes specific medication doses, lab orders, and follow-up instructions. The language reflects what was said in the room — not a compressed summary.
Frequently asked
Not yet through a native integration. The note is a finalized text block you copy and paste into your existing EHR — Epic, Athena, eClinicalWorks, or any other system. Most clinicians find this a reasonable trade-off: no IT approval process, no EHR vendor contract, no implementation timeline. You can start today. Native EHR integrations via FHIR are on our roadmap for covered entities with that requirement.
The audio is processed through an encrypted pipeline and is not accessible to any person at Charthalo. The transcript and note are available only to the clinician who initiated the session. Audio is not retained after the session ends. We will execute a Business Associate Agreement (BAA) with covered entities upon request.
In internal testing with ambulatory visit transcripts, Charthalo captures the chief complaint, HPI, and assessment/plan structure accurately in the large majority of cases. Accuracy varies by specialty context, background noise level, and how explicitly the clinician verbalizes examination findings. The note is a draft — you review it before it goes anywhere. We specifically designed the workflow so that no note enters a patient record without your explicit approval.
Yes — every section of the note is fully editable before you approve. You can change individual lines, restructure the plan, add examination findings you didn't verbalize, or override any AI-generated text. The draft is a starting point that belongs to you.
Charthalo never starts recording without an active session you initiate. If a patient declines, simply don't open Charthalo for that visit. The consent reminder at session start is a checkpoint for exactly this reason. Patient preference is always respected — there is no passive or background-always-on mode.