AI Notes with expansive-context

A good therapy note is not a transcript with headings. It is a selective clinical record: what mattered, how the work was understood, what shifted, and what needs to be carried forward.

The simplest AI-scribe workflow is transcript in, note out. That can produce a useful summary, but it risks treating each appointment as an isolated event. Therapy rarely works that way. Meaning often sits across sessions—in recurring patterns, working formulations, previous interventions, client goals and changes over time.

AirNote uses what we call an expansive-context approach. The current session remains the anchor, but it can be understood alongside relevant information from the client’s wider therapeutic record.

The context AirNote considers

When that information is available, AirNote can consider:

The current-session source. This may be a locally created transcript of the therapy conversation or a therapist’s dictated post-session summary. Speaker attribution helps AirNote distinguish the client’s account from the therapist’s questions, reflections and interventions.

Client History. AirNote maintains an evolving longitudinal summary created from previous session Notes. It can carry forward stable background, important relationships, recurring themes, therapy goals, formulation threads and clinically relevant developments over time.

Additional Context. The therapist can enter background information directly or attach PDF, Word and spreadsheet documents. This may include referral information, assessment summaries, measures, treatment plans or other records that help explain the client’s circumstances.

Session details. AirNote receives factual information such as the client reference, session title, date and timing.

The therapist’s clinical choices. The selected Note template, therapeutic modality, participant type, preferred detail level, quote preference and anonymous-client setting all shape the draft. Optional ICD-10 support can also be included when enabled.

Not every client or session has every layer. AirNote uses the context that is actually available rather than filling gaps with assumptions.

Different sources have different weight

The clinically important question is not simply how much context an AI can access. It is whether the system understands what each source can establish.

In AirNote, the current-session source has priority for what happened today. Client History and Additional Context support continuity, but they do not prove a client’s current presentation, an intervention, a response, a risk assessment or a plan unless the current session reviews or updates that material.

This matters. A historical concern should not quietly become a current symptom. An earlier formulation should not be presented as settled fact. A previous risk assessment should not be treated as today’s assessment.

AirNote is also instructed to preserve uncertainty and distinguish between client report, therapist observation, therapist hypothesis and jointly developed understanding.

From words to therapeutic meaning

With a wider frame, an AI note can do more than retell what was said. It can recognise when a pattern is recurring or changing, relate the current work to existing goals, preserve continuity in the formulation, and understand why an intervention may matter within the longer therapeutic process.

The aim is not a longer note. It is a more coherent one: less transcript recap, more clinically useful synthesis. Broad context does not mean copying every available detail. AirNote is instructed to omit irrelevant, unnecessarily intimate or third-party information unless it is needed for clinical understanding, risk, safeguarding or continuity.

A draft for clinical judgement

More context can make an AI-generated therapy note more useful, but it does not make the AI the clinician. The system did not sit in the room, hold the therapeutic relationship or make the professional decisions.

Every AirNote Note remains an editable draft for therapist review. Expansive context simply gives that draft a better chance of reflecting the therapy as a continuing clinical process—not merely a conversation that happened today.