# More precise audiences. More relevant conversations. Bring treatment history, recorded clinical areas and patient context into your audience. Combine who to include and exclude, keep dynamic groups maintained, then use them in your clinic’s broadcasts and automations. Feature availability depends on your plan, enabled features and access permissions. Canonical HTML: [https://dappleos.com/features/patient-segmentation](https://dappleos.com/features/patient-segmentation) Feature group: [Growth and engagement](https://dappleos.com/features/growth-engagement) ## At a glance - **Start with their history.** Combine a particular treatment with previous appointments and upcoming bookings. - **Include. Exclude. Refine.** Combine patient groups, including an exclusion based on a recorded clinical area. - **Make timing relevant.** Build a birthday audience using the days until each patient’s next birthday. - **Keep the audience current.** Let dynamic membership follow your criteria as connected clinic records change. - **Use it across your marketing.** Choose the same saved audience in broadcasts and configured automation journeys. ## The right group starts with the right context. A patient is more than a name on a mailing list. Use the information already connected in DappleOS to define who a communication is for, and who should be left out. ## Target with the detail your clinic already knows. Start with a practical question: who has previously had an appointment for this treatment, but has no upcoming booking for it? Bring those conditions together in one query, then inspect the matching patients. - **The particular treatment:** Choose a treatment or treatment option, rather than treating every appointment as the same history. - **What happened before:** Use recorded appointment history to define the relevant group. - **What is already booked:** Keep treatment-specific upcoming bookings distinct from a patient having any future appointment. ## Include what matters. Exclude what does not fit. Build your starting group, then combine it with another query using AND, AND NOT or OR. For example, exclude patients with Lips recorded in Clinical Areas from a relevant treatment-history audience. - **Combine whole patient groups:** AND keeps the overlap, AND NOT removes matching patients, and OR brings groups together. Queries are applied from top to bottom. - **Use the recorded clinical context:** Clinical Areas comes from anatomical markings saved in the clinical note. No matching area means no matching recorded area, rather than proof of a patient’s complete treatment history. - **Keep the purpose appropriate:** The resulting audience supports your clinic’s review. It does not determine whether a treatment is suitable. [See how anatomical areas are recorded](https://dappleos.com/features/clinical-notes-markings#notes-markings) ## A birthday audience that moves with the calendar. Use Days until birthday to find patients with a birthday today, in the coming week or in another chosen window. The rule follows the next birthday, so you can reuse the audience as membership refreshes. - **Define your window:** Set numeric conditions such as zero to 30 days. Birthday month is available as another patient field. - **Use a meaningful patient detail:** Birthday matching depends on a usable date of birth in the patient record. [Explore configured patient journeys](https://dappleos.com/features/intelligent-automations) ## An audience that keeps up. Dynamic segments are refreshed automatically, with an on-demand Refresh action when you want to update the audience. Patients enter or leave when their records match or stop matching the saved criteria. - **See the completed refresh:** Review Last updated, the member list and the available channel counts after population has completed. - **Keep deliberate groups deliberate:** Use a static segment when your team should manage membership directly instead of recalculating it from a query. - **Review who can be reached:** Customers, SMS, Email and App counts describe the audience and its channels. One patient can appear in several channel counts. ## One audience. More ways to follow through. Choose a saved segment when preparing a broadcast, or reference it in an automation’s entry, exit or membership conditions. Keep the audience definition in DappleOS instead of rebuilding it in a separate exported list. - **See where it is used:** Used by brings connected automations and unsent broadcasts into view. - **Keep refresh and activation distinct:** Updating membership is separate from the manual Run now action for pending automation work. Saving criteria does not send a broadcast. [Explore broadcasts](https://dappleos.com/features/broadcasts) [Explore automations](https://dappleos.com/features/intelligent-automations) ## Know who is in. Know what comes next. Inspect active and removed members, the refresh time and the journeys that depend on the segment. Review the audience before the next communication, then look to the connected campaign for message engagement and its configured goals. - **Audience review:** Membership, channel availability and Last updated answer different questions. Review them together. - **Broader investigation:** Use reporting to investigate the underlying clinic activity when the audience needs a closer look. [Explore reporting and analytics](https://dappleos.com/features/intelligent-reporting) ## Your criteria. Your review. Your next action. Precise targeting starts with clear records and an appropriate purpose. Your clinic remains responsible for reviewing the audience and deciding how to communicate. - **Grounded in the record:** Queries use connected clinic data. Missing or incomplete information affects which patients match. - **Clear membership rules:** Named queries and explicit AND, AND NOT and OR operators make your audience definition reviewable. - **A separate communication decision:** Segment membership is not consent to receive marketing. Channel preferences and the communication workflow remain relevant. - **Clinical judgement stays with the practitioner:** Recorded history can define a group. It does not make a clinical recommendation or establish treatment suitability. ## FAQs ### Can we find patients using the treatment history we already record? Yes. Build queries using connected patient information, including a selected treatment or treatment option and its previous and upcoming appointment context. This lets you define a relevant group without repeatedly rebuilding a separate list. The audience reflects the records and conditions you choose. ### Can we include one group and exclude a recorded clinical area? Yes. Combine your starting group with a Clinical Areas query using AND NOT. This removes patients with a matching recorded area, including patients who also have other areas recorded. It describes the clinic’s available records, not a complete history of treatment elsewhere or clinical suitability. ### Can a birthday audience update without rewriting the dates? Yes. Days until birthday is calculated using the patient’s next birthday, so your chosen window can stay the same as the calendar moves. Dynamic membership is recalculated on refresh. Patients need a usable date of birth for birthday criteria to match. ### Do segments update automatically? Dynamic segments are refreshed automatically from their saved queries. You can also request a refresh and review the completed result through the member list and Last updated. Static segments are different: your team manages their membership deliberately. ### Can we use the same audience in broadcasts and automations? Yes. Select a saved segment for a broadcast or use it in a configured automation’s entry, exit or membership conditions. Used by shows connected automations and unsent broadcasts. Saving audience criteria does not itself send a broadcast, and manual membership refresh is separate from processing pending automation work. ### Can we review patients and available channels before using an audience? Yes. Review active and removed members, Customers, SMS, Email and App counts, and Last updated. Channel counts can overlap because the same person may be reachable in several ways. Membership does not replace marketing consent, channel preferences or review of the communication. ### What should we bring to a demo? Bring a few real audience questions, such as a treatment-history group with no upcoming booking, an area exclusion or a birthday window. A DappleOS team member can walk through the relevant records, the query and the next communication so you can assess how it would fit your clinic. ## Related features - [Automations and journeys](https://dappleos.com/features/intelligent-automations) - [Planning](https://dappleos.com/features/treatment-planning) - [Reporting and analytics](https://dappleos.com/features/intelligent-reporting) ## Next step [Book a demo](https://dappleos.com/sales-call)