Provider Manual · Part XIX

Mobile: the physician app

My Hero is one app that becomes the physician app or the patient app depending on who signs in. This page covers the clinical side — the schedule, calendar sync, encounters and dictation, EPCS approval, the inbox and todos, and the security controls your practice sets.

7 sections~12 min read6 screenshots
XIX
Part XIX

Mobile: the physician app

My Hero is one app that becomes the physician app or the patient app depending on who signs in. This page covers the clinical side — the schedule, calendar sync, encounters and dictation, EPCS approval, the inbox and todos, and the security controls your practice sets.

19.1Install & sign in

One app, two experiences

My Hero is a single app on the App Store and Google Play. What it becomes depends on who signs in: a clinical account opens the physician app, a portal account opens the patient app. There is nothing separate for your patients to download, and no additional licence to buy — it is included with your Hero EMR practice.

Schedule Inbox Team Patients Todos
  1. Install it. Search My Hero on the App Store or Google Play, or use the direct links on the mobile apps page. The app runs on iPhone and Android phones; a few capabilities are iPhone-only and are called out where they appear.
  2. Sign in with your Hero credentials. Use the same email and password you use on the web EMR. If your practice has enabled passkeys, you will be offered one after your first sign-in — after that, Face ID, Touch ID or your device passcode is the whole login.
  3. Answer the two-step prompt if your practice enforces it. Clinical accounts may be challenged for a second factor (passkey or SMS). Your administrator sets whether this is off, report-only, a grace period, or strictly enforced — see security and device controls.
  4. Find your way around. Five tabs across the bottom: Schedule, Inbox, Team, Patients and Todos. The drawer (top-left) adds EPCS Signing, Kiosk Mode and Settings.
Everything is the same record. The app is not a copy or a summary. It reads and writes the same chart, the same inbox, the same schedule and the same todo list as the browser, with the same permissions your account has on the desktop. A chart you open on the phone even appears in your recent patients in the browser.
Hero on the phone. A small assistant button floats in the bottom-right corner of every physician screen — the phone’s version of the web magic wand. Tap it to speak or type a request; press and hold it for the “what can Hero do” guide, which stands in for the hover menu a phone can’t offer. It knows which screen you are on, and it opens things rather than doing them for you: a patient’s chart (on the tab you asked for), a message composer, a prescription or an order inside that chart, or your schedule — each landing where you would normally review and confirm it, exactly as the voice assistant does on the web. Hero stands aside where something else owns the screen — EPCS signing, the camera, a compose screen — and while a visit or literal dictation is recording, so only one recording button ever occupies that corner.
19.2Your schedule

The day, as work rather than a list of names

The Schedule tab opens on today. A collapsible month calendar sits at the top; below it is the agenda for the selected day. Pull down to refresh.

  1. The day summary tells you what is outstanding. Under the date you get a line like 6 visits · 2 to sign. The second number counts encounters that are complete but unsigned, so nothing waits quietly for a signature.
  2. Each row carries its encounter state, not just its appointment state. Rows are chipped Checked in, In progress, Note in progress, Ready to sign, Signed, Cancelled or No show.
  3. Tapping a row does the appropriate thing. Depending on state that is Start visit, Resume visit, Review & sign, or — on an already-signed encounter — a prompt asking whether you meant to begin an addendum. A separate chart icon on every row opens chart review instead.
  4. The month view is colour-coded by location. Days carry dots per practice location with a legend beneath, plus availability shading (fully booked, partially booked, empty, off). Days holding an imported outside commitment get a red marker.
  5. Dates follow the practice, not the phone. “Today” is your organization’s calendar day. Travel to another timezone and the app still agrees with your front desk.
The physician schedule on iPhone: a month calendar with per-location dots above the selected day's agenda
The Schedule tab — month calendar with location dots, then the day’s agenda. Tapping a row opens the encounter in the state it is actually in.
19.3Calendar sync

Two-way calendar sync

Hero syncs two ways with Google Calendar and with Outlook / Microsoft 365. Connect your own account once and your outside life and your clinic schedule stay in agreement. Import and export are separate switches; you can run either, both, or neither.

  1. Connect. Choose your provider and complete its sign-in in the secure browser sheet; you are returned automatically. The settings screen then shows the connected account (masked), the connection state, and when each direction last ran. Connecting from the phone currently offers Google; Outlook / Microsoft 365 is connected from the web EMR under Calendar sync. Either way the sync itself runs on Hero’s servers, so your phone’s schedule reflects it immediately.
  2. Import busy times. Turn on Import busy times and pick which calendar to read. Events from it block your Hero availability, so patients cannot book over a commitment that only exists in your own calendar. On the agenda these appear as a red, non-clinical block labelled External calendar — it has no chart button and cannot be opened as a visit.
  3. Export Hero appointments. Turn on Export Hero appointments and your Hero visits are written into your external calendar.
  4. Decide about patient details, deliberately. Exporting appointment details — patient names, visit reasons, notes — is a second, separate switch. Turning it on raises a confirmation explaining that this copies PHI to the provider’s servers and that it belongs on a BAA-covered Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 account. Your acknowledgement is recorded with a timestamp.
  5. Sync on demand. Sync now queues an immediate sync; the schedule refreshes itself over the following half-minute as the results land.
Before you enable detail export: personal Gmail and Outlook.com accounts are not eligible for a Business Associate Agreement. If you want appointment details in your own calendar, use a Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 account your organization has a BAA for — or leave the detail switch off and export busy blocks only.
Availability: calendar sync must be enabled for your Hero environment and configured by your administrator. When it is not, the settings card says so rather than offering a connect button.
Calendar sync settings on iPhone showing the connected account, import and export switches, the PHI toggle and the last synchronization times
Calendar sync under Settings — the connected account, the two direction switches, the separate PHI switch with its warning, and when each direction last ran.
19.4Encounters & dictation

Record the visit, sign the note

Opening an encounter from the schedule brings the full Hero note editor onto the phone, wrapped in a compact patient header — name, date of birth, allergy badge and a details dropdown. The note itself is the same editor you use on the desktop.

  1. Start ambient recording. Tap the microphone in the dictation bar and put the phone down. A live level meter and timer confirm it is listening. Recording continues while the screen is off and while you use other apps.
  2. Weak signal is handled for you. Audio uploads continuously in small chunks with automatic retries. If the network struggles you see Weak connection — audio is cached rather than losing the recording; it drains when signal returns.
  3. Interruptions pause rather than end. An incoming call pauses the recording and leaves an amber Paused — tap to resume bar. Leaving the encounter while recording asks whether to keep recording, stop and discard, or stay — and if you keep going, a floating pill follows you around the app with the running timer.
  4. On iPhone it lives on the lock screen. A Live Activity shows the recording and its progress in the Dynamic Island and on the lock screen, moving through Recording visit, Transcribing, Writing note and Open Hero to finish your note. Requires iOS 16.2 or later; the stop button in the expanded view requires iOS 17.
  5. Dictate literally when you want exact words. A second microphone records verbatim speech, cleans it up with the same engine as the desktop’s dictation, and inserts it into the note at your cursor. Recordings are capped at ten minutes each.
  6. Nothing is lost if the app dies. If the app is killed mid-visit, the next launch offers the session back with Recover or Discard. Recovering reopens the original encounter and replays the dictation into it.
  7. Sign, or add an addendum. Sign from the phone exactly as you would in the browser. Tapping an already-signed visit asks first whether you intend to create an addendum.
Availability: mobile encounters are gated three ways — a deployment-wide switch, your organization’s policy, and a minimum app version. If any of them is not satisfied, tapping a schedule row opens chart review instead, and the app never guesses.
19.5EPCS on your phone

Approving controlled substances

For electronic prescribing of controlled substances, your enrolled phone is the second factor. The web EMR asks for approval; the phone supplies it with a passkey backed by your device’s biometric or passcode. Setup is covered in full in the EPCS guide.

  1. Enrol the device once. Open the one-time device-invite link your administrator sends. The app registers a passkey and binds this phone as an approved signing device, optionally as your primary one. Until that is done, the phone cannot approve anything.
  2. Answer the request. When a signing session opens, a push notification arrives. The review screen shows the drug, strength, form, directions, quantity, days supply, refills, earliest fill date, DEA schedule, the patient, and the prescriber — with a live countdown to expiry.
  3. Approve or deny. Approve runs the passkey prompt on the device. Deny asks for confirmation. The server, not the phone, is authoritative about whether a session is still valid.
  4. Prescribe from the phone as well. Writing a controlled prescription in the mobile chart creates the draft, opens a signing session, waits for your approval, and only then transmits. Nothing is sent to a pharmacy before it is signed.
Where to find pending requests: open the drawer and choose EPCS Signing. The inbox lists sessions awaiting you with the time remaining on each, and refreshes itself while it is open.
EPCS approvals inbox on iPhone listing three controlled-substance signing requests with status and time remaining
The EPCS inbox. Each request shows the medication, the patient and the time left before the session expires; the server, not the phone, decides when one has lapsed.
19.6Inbox, chat & todos

Working the queues from a phone

The Inbox tab carries the same eight categories as the desktop, each with its own unread count: patient threads, results, refills, forms, staff messages, referrals, faxes and inquiries. Search and sort (recent, unread first, flagged first) are available within a category.

  1. Actions that actually close an item. Approve or deny a refill with a structured denial reason; approve or reject a form with notes; record how you responded to a result (message, call, SMS, portal or in person); complete a fax with notes and link it to a patient; forward a patient thread to a colleague.
  2. Compose with urgency and attachments. Start a new message or reply, set an urgency level, attach a file, and optionally tie the message to an encounter. You can also message a patient directly from their chart.
  3. Care team chat is a tab of its own. Team holds direct and group staff conversations over a live connection. Marking a message urgent raises an in-app banner for recipients. Set a topic patient on a conversation and you can then Save to chart, filing the discussion into that patient’s record.
  4. Todos are private to the people involved. Exactly as on the web, a todo is visible only to the person who created it and the person it is assigned to — the tags themselves are shared practice-wide (see the todo list). The Todos tab groups work into Overdue, Today, Upcoming, Anytime, Snoozed and Completed — all bucketed in the practice’s timezone. Add with one line, then attach a due date, priority, tags, a patient, or an assignee. Filter to Mine or Delegated. The tab badge counts only what is actionable today, so snoozed work never nags.
The physician inbox on iPhone with category filter chips and patient message threads
The Inbox tab — category chips carry their own unread counts, and each category offers the action that closes it.
The todo list on iPhone grouped into Overdue, Today, Upcoming and Anytime
Todos, grouped in the practice’s timezone. The quick-add row at the top takes a title; the chips beneath it attach a due date, priority, tags, a patient or an assignee.
A todo detail sheet showing notes, a checklist, and rows for due date, snooze, priority, assignee, tags and patient
Opening a todo gives you notes, a checklist, and every attribute on one sheet. Changes save as you make them, and completing offers a five-second undo.
19.7Security & devices

Security and device controls

The app assumes a clinical phone leaves the clinic. These are the controls that follow from that, and what you as an administrator can set.

  1. Passkeys. Sign-in uses a WebAuthn passkey held in the device’s secure hardware and unlocked with Face ID, Touch ID or the device passcode. Register one from Settings → Passkey; re-register to replace the one on a device.
  2. Clinical two-factor. Second-factor challenges use a passkey or an SMS code. The enforcement level — off, report-only, grace period, or enforced — is set centrally for your organization. A web EMR challenge can be satisfied with the passkey on your phone.
  3. EPCS device binding. Only phones your practice has enrolled can approve controlled-substance signing. Enrolment status, the number of approved devices, and which one is primary are all visible in the app.
  4. Encrypted local storage. Anything held on the device while waiting for a network — queued vitals, message drafts, trusted-device tokens — is stored in the operating system’s keychain rather than plain app storage.
  5. No PHI in logs. Visit transcripts are never written to disk or to a log. Diagnostic logging is redacted and silent in release builds.
  6. Minimum version enforcement. If your practice requires a newer app version than the one installed, the app blocks entry and links to the correct store rather than running against an unsupported contract.
Losing a phone. Treat a lost clinical phone as you would a lost badge: have an administrator remove its passkey and revoke its EPCS device approval. The passkey cannot be used from another device, but removing it closes the account cleanly.

Need help? Email support@heroemr.com.