Taking a patient's photo

Put a face to the chart: take a patient’s photo on your phone or tablet and have it land in Open Dental’s patient picture, without leaving Teamio.

Where: The round photo circle at the top of any patient profile.

Who can do this

Anyone who can open a patient profile. The circle is only active for practices on the All-in-One package — both Forms and Appointment Reminders enabled. Without both, the circle stays a plain silhouette with no camera badge and nothing to tap.

Photographing a document instead?

For an insurance card, a medication list or any other document, use Photo to OD in the profile’s action row. It asks which Open Dental image category to file the photo in, and it doesn’t touch this photo circle. See Sending a photo to Open Dental.

Taking the photo

A small camera badge in the corner of the circle means it’s ready.

1. Open the patient’s profile — see Finding the patient fast below.
2. Tap the photo circle.
3. Choose Take photo to open the camera, or Upload photo to pick a picture you already have.
4. Frame the shot and confirm with your device’s own Use Photo.

That’s the whole flow — there is no extra Save step. The picture appears in the circle right away and Photo saved. Sending to Open Dental… confirms it.

Take photo only appears on phones and tablets. On a desktop you’ll see Upload photo instead.

Finding the patient fast

On a tablet or laptop, the patient search sits right in the top bar, next to the ☰ menu. On a phone, tap the magnifying glass next to ☰ to open it.

• Type the patient’s name, in any order. “smith jo” and “Smith, John” both work. Each result shows the birthdate underneath, so you can tell two patients with the same name apart.
• Tap the search box without typing to see Recently viewed — the last patients opened on this device — so the patient in the chair is one tap away.
• Jump straight to the photo. On a phone or tablet, each search result has a camera button. Tap it and the patient’s profile opens with the photo options already showing; then tap Take photo.

If a patient who was just added doesn’t show up, tap Refresh patient list under No patient matches.

Where it ends up in Open Dental

Teamio files the picture in Open Dental’s Patient Pictures image category. Usually within a minute it shows up as that patient’s picture in the Family module — and, if your practice has that option turned on, when you hover their appointment in the Appointments module.

The photo is resized to roughly 800 pixels on its longest edge before it’s sent, so a 12-megapixel phone shot becomes a small file: quick to upload and easy on your imaging folder. It’s saved with a name like Patient Photo 2026-09-12_a1b2c3d4.jpg.

Every new photo is filed as a new Open Dental document rather than overwriting the last one, so you keep the history. Open Dental always shows the most recent.

Viewing, retaking and removing

Tap the circle again and you get more options:

• View photo — opens it full size.
• Take photo or Upload photo — replaces it. The new one becomes the patient picture.
• Remove photo — clears it from Teamio.

Remove only clears the Teamio copy

Remove photo takes the picture out of Teamio. It doesn’t stop the copy going to Open Dental — even a photo removed a few seconds after you took it still arrives there within a minute or so. Delete it from Open Dental’s Imaging module too if you want it gone from the chart.

Choosing a different image category

Go to Settings → General → Open Dental image category for patient profile photos.

Leave it on Auto — Patient Pictures (recommended). Auto reads your Open Dental and picks whichever category you have flagged as Patient Pictures, so it keeps working even if your category names differ from the default. Only change it if your office deliberately keeps patient pictures somewhere else.

If Teamio can’t find a suitable category, the photo still saves in Teamio and you’ll see Photo saved in Teamio, but not sent to Open Dental, with the reason. Set the category above and take the photo again.

Tips & common questions

• It hasn’t appeared in Open Dental yet. Give it a minute. Teamio hands the picture to the Teamio connector app on your Open Dental server, which checks for new work about once a minute — see How Teamio syncs with Open Dental. If it still hasn’t arrived, check the connector app is running.
• Can patients see this photo? No. It’s only visible to your team in Teamio and in Open Dental.
• Photos already in Open Dental — pictures taken directly in Open Dental stay there; Teamio’s circle shows the ones taken through Teamio.
• Get consent first if your practice’s policy calls for it, the same as any other patient image.

Related

• Sending a photo to Open Dental — insurance cards, medication lists and other documents, into the category you choose
• The patient profile
• How Teamio syncs with Open Dental
• Patient outreach overview