PhysioBase

A self-hosted knowledge base and documentation tool for physiotherapy. It keeps conditions, tests, exercises and treatment protocols in one searchable place, links them to patients and their assessments (Befunde), and prints exercise handouts and assessment reports.

One static Go binary, one SQLite file, server-rendered pages. The interface is in German. JavaScript is only used for marking the body chart and a few conveniences; everything else works without it.

Features

• Knowledge base: conditions, tests/assessments, exercises, treatment protocols and notes. Markdown content, tags, body regions, images, videos and PDFs, source references, and links between entries.
• Search: full text (SQLite FTS5) with prefix matching and diacritics folding: knie finds Kniegelenk, ubung finds Übung.
• Exercise handouts: pick exercises, set dosage and a personal note, reorder, copy as a template, print or save as PDF (A4 print view).
• Patients: assessments, treatment log, documents, linked knowledge entries, home programmes and summaries on one page.
• Patient documents: scanned PDFs and photos (doctor's letters, prescriptions, imaging, progress photos) with title, category and date. Several files per upload; phones and tablets can take the photo directly. Files are only served to a logged-in user, never cached, and deleted together with the patient.
• Assessment form (Befund): ICF-oriented and evidence-based, including red/yellow flag screening, NRS and pain mechanism, a body chart with symbol stamps, ROM/strength/girth tables, special tests, PROMs and performance tests, PSFS, differential diagnoses, and plan rationale. Specialty sections (orthopaedics, neurology, internal medicine, gynaecology/obstetrics, urology, paediatrics) open only when they contain data.
• Re-assessment and comparison: start a new assessment as a copy of the last one. Compare any two assessments; table rows are matched (for example joint and movement) and numeric changes are shown as Δ, including Neutral-Null notation (0-5-100 → 0-0-125 gives -5 / +25).
• Print view: only filled fields, body chart with legend, optional treatment log, signature lines.
• Summaries for patients: an overall summary (complaint, findings, goals, plan, home exercises, progress, when to get in touch) and one per treatment session. Both start as a draft built from the recorded data and are edited in plain language before they go out. Lines starting with ✎ are notes for the therapist and never appear in print or email.
• Email: send a summary to the patient over SMTP (text and HTML). Requires an address and recorded consent in the patient record; every attempt is logged with time, recipient and result.
• Import: JSON exports of the previous standalone assessment page (Befund_*.json) and of PhysioBase itself.
• Backups: consistent SQLite snapshots (VACUUM INTO) at start and every 24 hours, with a configurable number of kept copies.

Stack

• Go standard library, including the net/http router and html/template
• SQLite through modernc.org/sqlite (pure Go, no cgo), FTS5 for search
• goldmark for Markdown (raw HTML disabled)
• bcrypt from golang.org/x/crypto
• Pico CSS, vendored; no frontend build step

The form for an assessment is defined once as data in internal/befund/schema.go. The input form, print view, comparison and import are all generated from it. A new field added there appears everywhere.

Running

With the container image:

cp .env.example .env
echo 'your-password' | podman run --rm -i localhost/physiobase hash-password   # after the first build
# paste the hash into .env
podman compose up -d        # or: docker compose up -d

compose.yml builds the image, mounts ./data and publishes port 8080.

From source:

go build -o physiobase ./cmd/physiobase
echo 'your-password' | ./physiobase hash-password
PHYSIOBASE_USERNAME=admin PHYSIOBASE_PASSWORD_HASH='$2a$12$…' ./physiobase

Then open http://localhost:8080. An empty database gets a few sample entries (tagged Beispiel) so the structure is visible. They can be deleted.

Commands

Command	Purpose
physiobase	Start the server
physiobase hash-password	Read a password from stdin, print its bcrypt hash
physiobase healthcheck	Exit 0 if /healthz answers; used by the container health check

Configuration

All configuration is through environment variables. Templates and static files are embedded in the binary.

Variable	Default	Purpose
PHYSIOBASE_USERNAME	—	Required. Login user
PHYSIOBASE_PASSWORD_HASH	—	Required. bcrypt hash of the password
PHYSIOBASE_PORT	8080	Listen port
PHYSIOBASE_DATA_DIR	./data	Root for everything below
PHYSIOBASE_DB_PATH	<data>/physiobase.db	SQLite database
PHYSIOBASE_MEDIA_DIR	<data>/medien	Uploads of the knowledge base
PHYSIOBASE_DOCS_DIR	<data>/patienten	Patient documents (scans, photos)
PHYSIOBASE_BACKUP_DIR	<data>/backup	Daily database backups
PHYSIOBASE_BACKUP_KEEP	14	Backups to keep; 0 turns them off
PHYSIOBASE_PRACTICE_NAME	PhysioBase	Shown in the header and on printouts
PHYSIOBASE_BASE_URL	—	External URL; an https:// value makes cookies Secure and enables HSTS
PHYSIOBASE_SMTP_HOST	—	SMTP server; empty turns email off
PHYSIOBASE_SMTP_PORT	587	SMTP port
PHYSIOBASE_SMTP_SECURITY	starttls	ssl (implicit TLS, usually 465), starttls (587) or none (tests only)
PHYSIOBASE_SMTP_USER	—	SMTP login
PHYSIOBASE_SMTP_PASSWORD	—	SMTP password
PHYSIOBASE_SMTP_FROM	$PHYSIOBASE_SMTP_USER	Sender address; the practice name is the display name
PHYSIOBASE_SEED	1	Insert sample entries into an empty database
PHYSIOBASE_LOG_LEVEL	info	debug, info, warn or error
PHYSIOBASE_LOG_FORMAT	text	text or json; logs go to stderr

The server refuses to start without a username and password hash. There is no mode without login.

Security

• Sessions are signed cookies (expiry plus HMAC). Logging out rotates the signing secret, which ends every session on every device. Changing the password does the same.
• Logins are rate limited: at most two bcrypt checks run at once, and each failed attempt waits a second.
• Strict Content Security Policy: no inline scripts or styles, and script-src 'self'.
• Cross-site POSTs are rejected through Go's http.CrossOriginProtection.
• Uploaded files are only served if they belong to an entry in the database.
• Email goes only to the single address stored for the patient, only with recorded consent, and addresses are validated against header injection. Sending health information by email needs the patient's explicit consent (Art. 9 GDPR); keep the signed consent, for example as a patient document.

Health data: once real patient data is stored, run it behind HTTPS with access limited to people who need it. Encryption at rest is not built in yet; put the data directory on an encrypted volume.

Data and backups

data/
├── physiobase.db        SQLite (WAL mode)
├── medien/              uploads of the knowledge base
├── patienten/           patient documents
└── backup/              physiobase-YYYY-MM-DD_HHMMSS.db

The backups cover the database only. Uploads and patient documents are plain files that never change after upload; back up medien/ and patienten/ with your usual file backup or snapshots.

Do not copy physiobase.db while the server runs. In WAL mode, recent writes can still be in physiobase.db-wal. Use the files in backup/; each one is a complete, consistent database.

Restore: stop the server, copy a backup to physiobase.db, delete physiobase.db-wal and physiobase.db-shm, start again.

Development

go test -race ./...
golangci-lint run ./...
gofumpt -l -extra .

The same checks, plus go mod tidy and govulncheck, run in CI on every push (see .hearthforge-ci.toml).

Use of AI

This project was written with an AI coding assistant: Claude by Anthropic, a large language model, working through the pi coding agent. The model wrote most of the code, the tests and this README, and drafted the clinical content.

The maintainer is a state-certified masseur and physiotherapist trained in Germany. They chose the features, set the clinical direction (for example an ICF-oriented, evidence-based assessment with red/yellow flag screening and outcome measures) and are responsible for the clinical content.

That clinical content includes the structure and wording of the assessment form, the red/yellow flag lists, the suggested assessment instruments, the sample knowledge entries and the patient summary templates. It was drafted by the model from general physiotherapy knowledge, not taken from a specific guideline or textbook. If you use PhysioBase in your own practice, check it against current guidelines and your own professional judgement. The software supports documentation; it does not make clinical decisions.

The code is checked by automated tests, go vet, golangci-lint (including gosec), gofumpt and govulncheck on every push. That catches many mistakes, but not all. Review it before you trust it with patient data.

License

GNU Affero General Public License v3.0. If you run a modified version as a network service, its users are entitled to the source code.

Bundled third-party files keep their own licenses: Pico CSS (web/static/pico.min.css) is MIT-licensed.