A pet's clinical record in Lupa has three views that work together: the Timeline for "what happened, when", the AI Summary for "what's the headline on this patient before I see them", and the Admission record for in-clinic stays. This article covers all three. For the basics of the pet record itself — species, breed, microchip, weight — see ✅Managing pets.

💡 In short: Use the Timeline to read the full chronological record. Use the AI Summary for a 30-second briefing before the consult. Use Admissions to track patients while they're in your hospital.

The Pet Timeline

The clinical timeline lives in the History tab on every pet's profile. It's the chronological clinical record — every event involving the pet, ordered newest first. When you open the timeline, Lupa scrolls you straight to the most recent real activity (today or earlier), so you're never dropped into a far-future reminder by mistake. Any events dated after today — such as a vaccination booked for next month — still appear above, but are shown in muted grey so they're clearly distinct from the clinical history.

The History tab on a pet's profile — a left-hand list of dates with event icons, and a right-hand panel showing the full detail of the selected day (Nurse Appt with clinical notes and a draft invoice for £52.00). Search, date picker and Filters controls sit at the top

What appears on the Timeline

Event type	What it represents
Appointment	Booked, completed or cancelled appointments. Click through to the appointment detail page.
Medical Highlights	Diagnoses, preventives (vaccinations, parasiticides) and any other clinical event added to the record.
Note	Free-text clinical notes written by the team.
Treatment	Treatments given during a visit.
Prescription	Prescriptions issued, including medication name, dose and quantity. Click a prescription name to open the full Prescription details. Written prescriptions — handed to the client rather than dispensed in-house — show a signature icon instead of the standard Rx icon, so you can tell them apart at a glance. Prescriptions from another branch appear as plain text and cannot be opened from this timeline.
Diagnostic Result	Lab results returned from integrated providers (e.g. IDEXX, Zoetis). The result date is shown when one is recorded. Results from cancelled orders don't appear.
Imaging Result	Radiology and imaging results.
Invoice / Estimate	Invoices and estimates raised for the pet.
Claim	Insurance claims attached to the pet.
Reminder	Reminders set for the pet's owner.
Attachment	Files attached to the pet's record. Click an attachment to open it in a new tab.
Administrative Event	Transfers between owners and pet merges, recorded automatically when those actions happen.

Filtering and finding events

The timeline header has three controls:

Event type filter — open the filter popover and tick the event types you want to see. Untick everything except, say, Prescription to read just the medication history.
Date range — narrow the timeline to a specific window (last week, a month, the year of a referral, etc.).
Search — free-text search across timeline items. Useful for "find every entry mentioning amoxicillin" or "every note that mentions the left forelimb".

Each date on the timeline also shows a rounded relative label inline — for example 2 weeks ago or 3 months ago — so you can judge at a glance whether a vaccination is still in date or a treatment is recent, without doing the arithmetic yourself. For events within the last week, the label uses natural phrasing: today, yesterday, or 3 days ago. Future-dated day groups are shown in muted grey and appear above the current date, clearly separated from the clinical history.

You can also collapse and expand the day groups for a faster scroll through long histories.

Adding events directly from the timeline

The pet profile's Create menu lets you add events that land straight on the timeline:

Add Note — quick clinical note (visible to the team).
Add Diagnosis — appears as a Medical Record.
Add Preventive — vaccinations and parasiticides.
Add Medical Record — the broader form for any clinical record. These shortcuts are the fastest way to log something that happens outside an appointment — a phone-call note, a follow-up reminder, a vaccination given by a nurse between consults.

Exporting the timeline to PDF

Click Export → Generate PDF on the timeline to produce a PDF of the pet's clinical history. By default the export covers today and all past events only — future-dated entries (upcoming appointments, scheduled reminders) are excluded, so the document reads as a clean clinical history.

If you need to include upcoming events — for example, when sending a full record to a referral practice — tick Include upcoming events before generating. When included, those entries appear under a separate Upcoming events section at the top of the PDF, above the History section.

💡 Why two timelines? Some events (a transfer or a merge) are written by Lupa automatically. Others (notes, diagnoses) are added by your team. Both flow into the same timeline, so the chronological record is always complete.

The AI Summary

The AI Summary is a Lupa-generated digest of the pet's medical history that sits one click away from the pet profile. It's designed for the 30 seconds before you walk into a consultation: who is this patient, what's been going on, what should I be thinking about.

Where to find it

Open a pet's profile and click AI Assistant. The panel that opens has two parts:

AI Summary — the latest generated summary.
AI Assistant chat — ask follow-up questions in natural language and get answers grounded in the pet's record.

Where the summary references a specific clinical note, a small note badge appears inline next to that sentence. Click the badge to open the pet's timeline in a new tab, scrolled directly to that note.

What feeds the summary

The summary is generated by analysing the pet's:

Health records (diagnoses, preventives, treatments).
Notes and consultation records.
Prescriptions and medication history.
Diagnostic and imaging results. Lupa shows progress through these analysis stages while the summary is being generated, so you can see what's being read in real time.

Refreshing the summary

A summary is generated on-demand the first time you open the AI Assistant on a pet, then refreshed automatically when there's new clinical activity (for example, after a completed appointment). To force a refresh — useful if you've just added a long note and want to see it in the headline — click Regenerate in the AI Summary panel. Generation typically takes a few seconds; the panel updates in place when complete.

💡 The summary is a shortcut, not a substitute for the record. Use it as a starting point and verify anything important against the timeline before clinical decisions. The full record is always the source of truth.

Admissions

An Admission is the record for an in-clinic patient stay — hospitalisations, day cases, surgical admissions. It lets you track who's in the building, who's looking after them, where they are, and where they are in the discharge process.

Admission statuses

A patient moves through the following statuses during their stay:

Status	Meaning
Confirmed	The admission is booked but the patient hasn't arrived yet.
Admitted	The patient has been admitted and is under your care.
In Progress	Care is actively underway (procedures, ongoing treatment).
Ready for Discharge	Care is complete and the patient is waiting to go home.
Discharged	The patient has left the practice.

Status is set via a dropdown pill on the admission page. Each transition is logged with a timestamp in the admission history, so the audit trail of who changed what, and when, is preserved.

Admission record fields

Field	What it does
Pet and admission date	Header context — the pet name, scheduled start, and current admission date.
Status pill	Click to move through Confirmed → Admitted → In Progress → Ready for Discharge → Discharged.
Attending clinician	Searchable employee dropdown. Reassign by selecting a different clinician.
Room / location	Searchable room selector. Reassign as the patient moves around the hospital. Each change is logged.
Reason	Free-text reason for admission.
Weight on admission	Pulled from the pet's most recent weight reading at admission time. Useful for dose calculations during the stay.
DNR (Do Not Resuscitate)	Flag set when the owner has signed a DNR for this admission. Surfaces prominently for the clinical team.
Admission Type	Categorised as Medical, Day Case or Surgical.
Notes	Clinical and internal notes specific to this admission (separate from the pet's general notes).

Creating an admission

Admissions are typically created from the calendar / hospitalisation views rather than directly from the pet profile — you book the admission as you would an appointment, then it appears on the pet's timeline as an APPOINTMENT-type event for the date of stay.

Where admissions show up on the pet record

Admissions thread through three places:

The pet's Timeline — shown as an appointment-type event with the admission's start and end times.
The Admission detail page itself — full record with status, clinician, room and notes.
The pet's history of admissions — visible across the timeline by filtering for the admission event type.

Tips

✅ Get the most out of pet history:

Open the AI Summary first when picking up a transfer or seeing a complex patient cold. It surfaces the headline so you can dive into the timeline with context.
Filter the Timeline to one event type when you only need one slice (e.g. just prescriptions before a refill check).
Add notes from the timeline — quick notes typed during a phone call land on the record exactly where they belong.
Don't be confused by greyed-out entries at the top of the timeline — those are future-dated events (upcoming appointments, scheduled reminders). The timeline always opens at the most recent real activity.
Tick "Include upcoming events" when exporting if you need the full picture — for example, when sending records to a referral practice. Leave it unticked for a clean clinical history PDF.
Update admission status promptly as patients move through care. Other staff rely on the pill to know who's in, who's out, and who's ready to leave.
Keep room assignments accurate during admissions. The room field is the single source of truth for "where is this patient right now".
Regenerate the AI Summary if you've just added important context that won't show up otherwise — surgery findings, a new diagnosis, a long note. After regenerating, click any note badge in the summary to jump straight to that note on the timeline.

Troubleshooting

Problem	Solution
Timeline is empty	The pet may be brand new or the date-range filter is too narrow. Clear filters and check the time range. Note that future-dated events appear greyed out above today's date — if you're only seeing those, scroll down to find the clinical history.
Timeline is missing a recent event	Reload the page to refresh the data. If the event is in another module (e.g. a lab result still syncing), it'll appear once the integration delivers.
A lab result isn't on the timeline	If the diagnostic order was cancelled, its results are hidden from the timeline and won't appear even after a reload. If the order isn't cancelled, the result may still be syncing from your lab provider — reload after a moment.
An attachment won't open when I click it	Attachments open in a new browser tab. If nothing happens, check that your browser isn't blocking pop-ups for Lupa, then try again.
AI Summary doesn't reflect a note I just added	Click Regenerate in the AI Summary panel. Auto-refresh runs after appointments; standalone notes don't trigger an automatic refresh. After regenerating, note badges will appear next to any summary entries that reference specific notes.
AI Summary regenerate button is missing	Reopen the AI Assistant panel from the pet profile. The button is part of the summary view; it's hidden while a generation is in progress.
Admission status pill won't change	You may not have permission to manage admissions for this store. Ask an administrator to grant the relevant permission.
Admission room is wrong / out of date	Click the room field and pick the correct one. The previous assignment is preserved in the admission history.
Discharged a patient by mistake	Open the admission and move the status back. The history log records both transitions, so the audit trail is preserved.
Pet weight on admission looks wrong	The figure is the pet's most recent recorded weight at the time of admission. Add a fresh weight reading on the pet profile if you need a current value for dosing.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does the Timeline show every event for a pet?

Almost everything. Every clinical event (appointments, prescriptions, diagnoses, lab results, imaging) and every administrative event (transfers, merges) appears on the timeline, with one exception: results from cancelled diagnostic orders are hidden and won't appear. Future-dated events (upcoming appointments, scheduled reminders) also appear, but are shown in muted grey above today's date so they're clearly distinct from the clinical history. If something else is missing, it usually hasn't synced yet — reload after a moment.

Can I delete events from the Timeline?

You delete events at the source. For example, delete a note from the note's edit dialog, or void an invoice from the invoice page — the timeline updates automatically.

Is the AI Summary visible to clients?

No. It's an internal tool for the clinical team and lives behind staff authentication. Clients don't see it.

Can I copy the AI Summary into a referral letter or email?

Yes — the summary is plain text and can be copied. Treat the copy as a starting point and review it carefully before sharing externally.

How is an admission different from an appointment?

An appointment is a single scheduled interaction (a consult, a procedure). An admission is the record of a stay at the practice, which may span hours, days or longer. Admissions track room, attending clinician and discharge readiness in a way that appointments don't.

What happens to admissions when a pet is transferred to a new owner?

Admissions follow the pet — they remain on the pet's record under the new owner. The transfer itself is logged on the timeline as an Administrative Event.

Can I view all currently admitted patients in one place?

Yes — the calendar / hospitalisation views in the work app show every active admission across your practice. Use the admission status filter to see only Admitted or In Progress patients.

Pet history, summaries and admissions