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Our product · Healthcare

MediFlow: outpatient appointment booking inside WhatsApp at Gift of Sight

Patients book, move and cancel their own appointments inside a WhatsApp conversation, and staff run the clinic from an admin panel behind it. Live at Gift of Sight Eye Hospital in Tiruchirappalli, with an on-premise deployment for SIMS Chellum Hospital in Salem in progress.

Sector · Healthcare / ophthalmologyMarket · Tamil Nadu, IndiaOwned by · Fordawn, deployed per hospital

MediFlow, our WhatsApp appointment booking system for hospitals is Fordawn’s own product rather than a one-off client build. It runs on Meta’s WhatsApp Cloud API, and a sequence of conversation states carries a patient from a first message to a confirmed appointment. Behind it is an admin panel where the hospital manages doctors, slots, leave and who is allowed to do what.

What MediFlow replaced

How the hospital ran before MediFlow, and how it runs with it
Booking channelBefore MediFlow
  • A phone call to the front desk
  • Working hours only
With MediFlow
  • Self-service inside WhatsApp, at any hour
  • No app to install, no portal to log into
Front-desk workloadBefore MediFlow
  • Bookings arrived as phone calls to the front desk
With MediFlow
  • Routine changes never reach the desk
  • Reception stays with the patients in front of it
Doctor leave and holidaysBefore MediFlow
  • Every affected booking found by hand
  • Each patient called individually
With MediFlow
  • Patients booked further out are messaged automatically
  • The desk gets a call list for the bookings within a few hours
Fees and receiptsBefore MediFlow
  • No billing system
With MediFlow
  • Fees, payments and receipts are held in the system
  • Online payment is built in and connected, switched on or off per hospital
Approach

Why not just buy a WhatsApp chatbot tool?

A dashboard chatbot builder handles a linear conversation well, and this booking is not one. It has to survive for days, reopen when a staff member acts on it somewhere else, sit behind role-based access to patient records, and leave an audit trail that stands up to scrutiny. Those were the requirements.

So we went straight to Meta’s WhatsApp Cloud API with no intermediary, and put a database and a permission model behind it. One modelling decision came from the clinic rather than the software: capacity is set per time-band, not per minute, because that is how an outpatient department actually runs.

What we shipped

One conversation for patients, one panel for staff, one schedule behind both

Patients book, view, reschedule and cancel inside one WhatsApp conversation. Reception, doctors and lab technicians work from an admin panel, and both sides read the same schedule. A hospital administrator edits who can do what in that panel themselves, rather than filing a change request with Fordawn.

How it holds up

What had to be right before a patient could book

  • Cancelled leave, restored appointments. When a doctor’s leave is called off, every patient who was moved is automatically offered their original slot back in one tap. A slot that is no longer free cannot be restored.
  • No double bookings. Capacity is checked at the moment a booking is confirmed. When two patients tap the same slot at the same moment, only one of them gets it.
  • Privacy-first data architecture. The patient record carries what a booking needs: an identifier, a name, a phone number and the language chosen for messages. A patient booking on the hospital's website gives their own age and sex, and the national health identifiers are entered only at the hospital's own desk. The record itself holds no diagnoses and no clinical notes. Where a hospital uses the prescription and pharmacy modules, the medicines dispensed are recorded against that visit.
  • Authorisation on every action. Every action checks what the person doing it is allowed to see and do. A hospital administrator sets those permissions, and a doctor sees only their own patients.
  • Controlled appointment capacity. Per-day and per-slot limits regulate automated bookings while preserving capacity for walk-in patients and reception staff.
In their words

What the doctors at the hospitals we work with say about us.

Dr. J. Ram, MD (Respiratory Diseases), DTCDConsultant Pulmonologist, SIMS Chellum Hospital, Salem
Working with the team was an absolute pleasure. They took the time to truly understand our requirements, remained responsive at every step, and delivered a final product tailored precisely to our needs. We are extremely pleased with their ongoing support and wouldn't hesitate to recommend their services.
Dr. A.S. Kumar, MD, DNB, FNICConsultant Paediatrician, SIMS Chellum Hospital, Salem
I am thoroughly impressed with the service provided by the team. From day one, they were attentive, approachable, and completely aligned with our vision. It was a fantastic experience, and I look forward to collaborating with them again in the future.
Dr. Prem Prakash, MS, MChHead of Neurosurgery, SIMS Chellum Hospital, Salem
The team made the entire process smooth and hassle-free. They were transparent in their communication, and genuinely committed to quality. I am truly impressed with their work and professionalism.
Dr. Vinod NathanielConsultant Ophthalmologist, Gift of Sight Eye Hospital, Tiruchirappalli
Fordawn MediFlow team did an exceptional job with not just the appointments and registration flow but also in interacting with the staff and training them for handling the app. Keep it up team.

The product itself, including what the admin panel does and what the support agreement commits to, is on the WhatsApp appointment booking page.

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