'%20fill='%2300FF00'/%3e%3c/svg%3e)
For healthcare
Triage every patient before they sit down. Same fair questions, in their own words.
Totem hosts the intake conversation with every patient on this week's schedule. Urgent flags surface before the appointment, the in-room time goes to what matters, and nothing relevant gets lost in a checkbox.
Silent betaFully free in beta
Week-19 Triage Cohort, General Practice
Patient triage interviews. Totem ran this conversation across 23 patients and synthesized what came back into the takeaway below.
Key findingsAI-synthesized from 23 patients
Of 23 incoming patients, 4 flagged as urgent on symptom-onset and severity, surfaced for same-day callback. 11 are routine but mention a secondary concern worth raising in-room. 8 are clean follow-ups. Three patients would have been missed by the standard form, including a 71-year-old with new chest pressure she'd thought was 'just stress'.
- Urgent — same-day callback
- Routine + secondary concern
- Clean follow-up
- Form would have missed
- Mental-health flag
- 20%Positive
- 40%Friction
- 40%Focus
- Responses
- 0
- Fully completed
- 0/0
- Avg. completion
- 0%
- Avg. length
- 0m
From silent-beta calls
“I would have caught the chest-pressure patient in-room, eventually. By minute eleven of a twelve-minute appointment, that's late. Totem flagged it before she sat down.”
— a GP, week three of the silent beta
What clinicians ask first
“But patients trust forms more than AI.”
Patients trust real conversation more than either. Totem's host listens and probes where forms tick boxes, and the GP in the silent beta's first week caught a chest-pressure flag the form would have buried under "yes, fine." It's not replacing your minutes with the patient; it's making sure those minutes go to what matters, not the medication-list checklist.
What clinicians start with
The patient conversations that don't fit a 12-minute slot.
Post-visit patient feedback
Post-visit patient feedback
What patients tell their family. Now you hear it too.
Mental-health screen
Mental-health screen
Catch the urgent voice on the wait-list, in their own words.
Voice-of-customer for product
Voice-of-customer for product
What customers would defend in the roadmap meeting.
Why clinicians pick Totem
- 01
The form misses what the conversation catches. Patients self-discount their own symptoms. Forms are built for averages. A real conversation surfaces the line they almost didn't say.
- 02
In-room time goes to what matters. By the time the patient sits down, you know the urgent thing, the secondary concern, and the context. The twelve minutes are clinical, not administrative.
- 03
Same questions, every patient. Consistent intake across the cohort. The thirteenth patient of the day gets the same rigour as the first.
What changes
What changes for clinicians.
- 01
10–15 minutes per appointment, returned
Primary-care visits routinely run 10 minutes (NHS England standard) to 15 minutes (US averages). The administrative slice of every visit hosted before anyone sits down. The clinical conversation expands to fill the time.
Appointment-length standards · NHS England, AAFP
- 02
Symptom self-discounting, named in the moment
Patients minimise. A skilled host probes specifics, follows up on hedges, and surfaces what the standard intake form quietly normalises.
- 03
Triage as a conversation, not a checkbox
The shape of urgency is in the language. Severity flags grounded in what the patient actually said, surfaced for callback before the appointment.
Common questions
What clinicians ask before they try Totem.
- How can clinicians run patient intake at scale?
- By moving the structured intake from the appointment slot to async conversation. Totem hosts the same intake conversation with every patient before their visit, asks adaptive follow-up probes on hedged answers, and surfaces the urgent items in time for the schedule to be re-ordered.
- What's the best tool for async patient intake?
- Most patient intake tools are forms — closed-ended, low-fidelity, easy to skim. Totem runs depth conversations instead: the question set is consistent across patients, but the probes adapt to what each patient says. Symptom self-discounting that forms quietly normalise gets caught.
- Can AI replace the in-room patient conversation?
- No, and the framing misses the point. AI replaces the administrative slice of the visit (intake, history, complaint, medication review). The clinical conversation expands to fill the time it returns. The clinician stays in the room; the form leaves it.
- How does Totem help with consistent patient intake?
- Same questions, same probes, every patient. Drift between intake-takers — different staff, different days, different probes — is one of the largest unmeasured sources of variance in primary care. Async structured intake eliminates the drift. The thirteenth patient of the day gets the same rigour as the first.
- How is Totem different from a symptom checker like Babylon or Ada?
- Symptom checkers triage to a recommended action (see GP, see specialist, self-care). Totem doesn't triage to an action — it produces an intake summary the clinician reads before the patient sits down. It complements the form-and-conversation flow; it doesn't replace clinical judgement.
- Is Totem HIPAA-compliant?
- Totem is in silent beta and has not yet undergone HIPAA certification. Clinicians using Totem during the beta should not enter PHI without their own compliance review. HIPAA-aligned hosting and BAAs are on the post-launch roadmap. Email hi@totem.app for the current status.
Your turn
Describe the intake. Hear every patient first.
One prompt seeds the protocol. Totem hosts intake with every patient on the schedule. You wake to the day, sorted, with the moments that need your room first.
Drop your promptFree during the betaNo cardYour prompt, your data