Agree. Evernote is very complex
@mkazlow, this is assuming @ghmotlagh resides in the US or other country that has HIPPA-type laws. Iām not sure Agenda is available only in the US. @mekentosj ? Just how far flung are your users? 
Inquiring minds wish to know.
I use both Bear and Agendaā¦ Bear is really nice for longer notes with a lot of formatting to it, notes that I intend to keep around. Agenda is great for the day to day scribbles that need to correlate to specific events or projects, and will be erased as soon as Iām done with them. Bear is more of a writing app while Agenda is more of a day planner. Both great.
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Good point. I forget how provincial I can be.
However, is likely that OP has to comply with some kind of data protection and/or privacy law o regulation. If not, is nice to remind OP that this information is very sensible so it shouldnāt be up in the cloud.
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Ok. Yestedray I tested Notes app(apple) and see an interesting thing. After sharing a note or pdf from another app to the Notes, I saw duplicated note in Notes instead of one !
Notes are well-known for unpredictable twists like this one. I tried to use them to organize my patients data (I practiced as endocrinologist) and it turned out pretty nightmarish. In the end I switched to Evernote on my Mac and iPad.
I liked Evernote, despite itās unfriendly user interface (IMHO), but 5 months later the my iPad app crashed and when I restarted Evernote, I discovered, that all my notes were gone. Support couldnāt help, they tried their best, but it was a rare server glitch and I was among the very few āreally luckyā. I had a backup, but I couldnāt really put myself to use Evernote anymore, so I switched to Scrivener.
Actually, Scrivener is a writing tool, but I could make folders and subfolders and attach images. It wasnāt bad, though lack of calendar integration did hurt. In the meantime I changed my job to cognitive based psychoterapy and soon discovered Agenda. I was wary, because years ago I was sorely disappointed in the release version of Papers 3 (Papers 2 were my favourite library app for quite some time), but decided to give Agenda a shot. So far, Iām satisfied, because the app is mostly stable and developers actually develop it. As soon as they released iOS app I bought premium version to support the development.
I loved the sync with the calendar, because I connected all upcoming client sessions to calendar events in a few clicks. For the first time in years I feel my practice more or less organized and Iām waiting eagerly for updates.
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Iām confused to selection of an app for my patients dossier too. In testing Agenda I saw a very simple text color , impossible images attachment and other faults. But speed syncing, back up feature, @drewmccormack is a professional in their team( #studies helped me in my postgraduate studies) and good support are its good features.
But waiting for the future updates !
Dr ! Have you tested Notability for note taking too? It is a good app too. Any idea ?
@ghmotlagh It looks for your needs OneNote from Microsoft may work well. I like the photo-text integration of it and itās easy to create notebooks and subfolders within.
Trello may be another option for more structure in your projects if you want to add a timeline of work done/doing/to be done.
I just started trying Agenda and it seems great for project note taking and planner, like a āwork journalā to capture your ideas and plan follow ups. It would be great if it had PC integration as well since laptops are still widely use for āheavy-dutyā work not available in mobile or Macā¦
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Id prefer Agenda over onenote. @drewmccormack is a professinal man and so Iāll wait for Agenda updates.
I totally agree. It even exports the tags by default. Itās difficult to organize in Bear, so Iāve taken to using it more for simple notes. I use Ulysses for more structured and longer-form writing, and Agenda for my professional meeting- and project-oriented efforts.
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I have found myself evolving to the same approach. One important point you make is, āso Iāve taken to using it more for simple notesā. There is no shame in āsimple notes!ā A tendency with app developers is that as soon as it has a decent text editor, it aspires to be a do-it-all writing platform. I think Bear fell into this trap.
Right now Iām positioning Ulysses for larger scale writing projects that I want to have permanence, and Agenda for āsimple notesā that will may evolve to a larger-scale project, in which case they āmoveā to Ulysses (or some other app), or that have some chronological significance, in which case Agenda is really serving as a notebook that preserves that timeline.
Just when I reach a point at which Iām tempted to stop using Agenda and do everything in Ulysses, I realize that I still have a need for āsimple notes.ā As long as Agenda stays focused (which the developers keep acknowledging), I think thereās purpose for both apps.
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Seems like Evernote would suit you here.
Oops
If I may add my opinion, my possible suggestion would be the use of Ulysses, which has no limit including any type of document in a very structured way
I checked out Bear, and did like it for a collection of undated notes. But it fell short in terms of dated notes, which for me, is one of Agendaās absolutely killer features.
Over the years, Iāve learned that I have two basic types of notes: dated and undated notes. Undated notes represent information thatās subject to change. For me itās a sort of personal wiki. I might have a note that lists books I want to read or have read, or my current thinking on a specific work topic. For that sort of stuff, Bear works nicely.
Dated notes are obviously more tied to specific dates. Traditionally that has been a record of what happened, when. But this is where Agenda introduces something truly innovative as far as Iāve seen. You can attach notes to specific calendar events, or date ranges.
So Iāve got a meeting on Friday, and as the week goes on I have some things I want to talk about in that meeting. I create an Agenda note for the meeting, and as ideas come up I add them to that note. Before the meeting, I clean things up, turn items into checklists so I can track what Iāve talked about, etc. Then add in thoughts / responses to questions as the meeting goes on. Thatās pretty slick. I am always extremely well-prepared for meetings, and it takes almost no time to do so. Itās a hell of a secret weapon 
But I also have things that span longer periods of time, like goals Iām working towards over the next 3-12 months. I can create a single note to represent that goal, and assign it to a date range. Now when I look at a specific day or filter on a date range, Iāll see all the notes that apply to that timeline. So given how Iāve organized things, I see a list of my yearly goals, quarterly goals, weekly goals, and daily goals all in a single view. That sort of context around my thinking and work is something Iāve wanted badly for a long time, and took me a little bit to wrap my head around with Agenda because itās new to me. But now that Iāve seen what it can do Iām thrilled with it.
So Bear is good for undated notes, and date-specific apps like Day One or any app that lets you reset the ācreatedā date is pretty good for dated notes. But, Iāve always run into the problem ā where did I put that thing? Was it undated information that lives in Bear? Or dated information that lives in Day One? And where does new information go? As long as I keep everything in those two places it can work okayā¦ but I still felt a lot of frustration trying to track down what went where, and often times where to put new stuff. Plus, all of the dated information apps that Iāve seen only let you assign notes to a single date (which sometimes feels hacky, like overriding the created at date). They donāt let you assign notes to a calendar event or date range, like you can do with Agenda. That really is killer.
Iām not looking for āone app to rule them all,ā but I do desperately want a single source of truth for my notes. Agenda is really close on that front ā it just needs some fixing of permalinks (which the developers are aware of), and then I can trust it to store my highly-linked, undated notes in addition to my dated notes. And from that point on, anything they add is just a bonus to me.
So my take is, if you care about dates and events at all then you absolutely cannot beat Agenda. But if dates and events mean nothing to you in terms of note-taking ā and I really do mean nothing ā then Bear is probably more compelling because of its hierarchical tag organization.
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I know this is a very old post and Iām not a fan of necro-posting, however there may be others with similar use case/need and therefore thought Iād add my two-cents.
Bear
- Organization:
- Bear supports deeply nested tags and that should suffice for most needs in terms of organization.
- Bear supports wiki like syntax to link notes together (like agenda allows)
- Security: The latest beta also has single note encryption which is a boon for securing patient data.
- Content: Bear allows attaching images. Formatting is easy and the āhighlightingā function is cool to mark up important sections.
Agenda
As you can see from the short list above, Bear is quite versatile and could surely serve well for this intended purpose.
However, having said that, and if I were a physician with this need/use case, then I would 100% opt for Agenda for the following couple of reasons (off the top of my head)
- Organization:
- Most physicians I know work at multiple practices and therefore Categories for each practice and project for each patient would work extremely well;
- Agendaās date focused approach would be ideal to track notes on the date/time the patient had his appointment;
- Agendaās related view would help bring to light similar cases with other patients etc.
- Hook a note to a future appointment to remind yourself to review something pertaining to that patient or use reminders integration for this too;
- Content: Youāre able to add images and the available formatting options should suffice for most situations
I guess, the main advantages of Agenda here are almost all pertaining to organization and structure, but with many patients, organization will ultimately be king!
Hope this helps others too.
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I would love to see Agenda using tags like Bear does and also how 1Password does. Bear uses the tags as āfolders & sub-foldersā, 1Password has a collapsible Tag section with all the tags. I feel more people are using tags these daysā¦ 2 centsā¦
Hi Pat, would you be willing to go into more detail about your use of agenda with long term goals? Iām still figuring Agenda out and having trouble wrapping my head around how to use it in that way as well.
I forgot another very obvious organization boon with Agenda. The person tag is a great way to refer to patients in notes outside a patient project. Maybe a global task list or something.