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Forms vs Assessments: What's the difference?


Forms and Assessments look alike in the Patient App, and the two names often get used interchangeably. They're built and managed quite differently, though, and the quickest way to tell them apart is to ask who creates them: your Organisation builds Forms, while the Wellifiy team builds Assessments. This article explains the difference and helps you work out which one you need.

📋 The Main Difference

Both Forms and Assessments collect information from patients, but they differ in two key ways:

  • You create and manage Forms yourself, whereas Assessments are built for you by the Wellifiy team.
  • Forms collect structured information; Assessments are standardised clinical questionnaires that calculate a score and track results over time.

📝 Forms (build these yourself)

A Form is a structured way to collect information from a patient. Intake forms, consent forms, and feedback surveys are all Forms. They aren't scored, and your Organisation can create and edit them without involving the Wellifiy team.

Common uses:

  • Intake and registration details
  • Consent and agreement collection
  • Custom questionnaires and feedback surveys

🧠 Assessments (built by the Wellifiy team)

An Assessment is a standardised clinical questionnaire that produces a score, such as the DASS-21, PHQ-9, PCL-5, or CORE-10. Assessments are presented to patients one question at a time, and results can be tracked and graphed across repeated completions so clinicians can see change over time.

Because Assessments include scoring and result-tracking logic, they're built by the Wellifiy team rather than configured in the Staff Portal. If you need an Assessment added, contact the Wellifiy support team with the questionnaire details.

📍 Where to Create a Form

Go to:
Administration → Form Management

Then click + New to start building a Form. From here you can name the Form, add your questions, and save it. For the full walkthrough, see the Building a Form guide.

🧩 Choosing the Right One

Use a Form when you want to collect information and can build it yourself — intake, consent, registration, or a custom survey.

Request an Assessment when you need a standardised, scored clinical measure (like the DASS-21 or PHQ-9) with results tracked over time.

One thing to watch: a Form's name doesn't determine its type. A Form titled something like "Intake Assessment Form" is still a Form if your Organisation built it, and the word "Assessment" in a title doesn't make it a platform Assessment. If you're unsure what an existing item is, check whether it was built in Form Management (a Form) or supplied by the Wellifiy team (an Assessment).

💡 Best Practices

  • Build a Form for anything you can configure yourself, such as intake, consent, and feedback collection.
  • Request an Assessment when you specifically need clinical scoring and result tracking, not just data collection.
  • Give Forms clear, descriptive names so they're easy to find and don't get mistaken for Assessments.
  • Before creating a new Form, check whether a similar one already exists in Form Management that you can reuse or clone.

Next step:
➡️ Once your Form is built, you can attach it to a Service, a Patient Journey stage, or your patient sign-up flow. See the guide on attaching Forms