Healthcare messenger use cases

In healthcare, proper communication is near the top in the priority ranking. For most of us, health and well-being are among our major concerns, and we appreciate being able to get medical assistance quickly. However, many people have faced the situation when they have to wait for a couple of weeks for a doctor appointment or spend hours in a queue in a hospital reception room.

At the same time, many of our healthcare concerns can be resolved remotely, by connecting to doctors, nurses or clinic administrators via messaging applications. We are not talking only about such things as appointment scheduling, billing or insurance matters. Remote, or telemedicine, can include even cases directly related to medical treatment, such as routine checkups, follow-up treatment, initial diagnostics or emergency care.

In fact, the use cases of messenger applications in the healthcare industry are quite numerous, and we’ll look briefly at some of them.

Doctor-patient text chat

A text chat between doctors and their patients becomes a perfect solution for ambulatory patients undergoing treatment prescribed by their doctors. For example, after the initial examination, the doctor can prescribe medicines or manipulations for a certain period. During that period, the doctor can check on the patient via chat to verify that the treatment goes as planned. On the other hand, the patient can use the same chat to consult with the doctor if any unexpected symptoms occur.

In such a routine case, there is no need for the patient to visit the doctor’s office regularly if nothing happens out of the ordinary. By substituting routine visits with chats, both doctors and patients save significant time and costs. Think of patients undergoing treatment while continuing their work. If they can chat with their doctors instead of visiting them, they will not need to take time off.

Also, patients are not restricted to their geographic locations and can go wherever they want to while continuing their treatment. Via chat, they can connect to their doctors despite their whereabouts and discuss their health status.

Audio and video chat for urgent cases

During accidents, proper first aid administered quickly may literally become a matter of life and death. In this case, a video chat with a doctor who can assess the situation quickly and instruct the people at the accident site how to stabilize the victim can help to save precious time and avoid mistakes that can harm the patient.

At the same time, video consultations can be useful not only in the event of an accident. Video communication allows the doctor to examine the patient remotely to make a preliminary diagnosis or rule out certain conditions. Of course, in many cases a visit to the clinic may be in order, but, based on the video examination, the doctor can prescribe some first-aid treatments to be used before the patient arrives at the hospital.

Video sessions may also be a convenient solution for patients with reduced mobility. For regular checkups requiring no treatment, such patients can be examined via video chat without the need of traveling to the clinic.

Group consultations

Often, finding the right treatment requires examinations and consultations by different health specialists. Setting up a group chat to discuss the patient and come up with the most optimal treatment protocol may prove to be easier than getting half a dozen busy doctors in the same physical place.

Advanced chat options, such as video conferences or file upload, allow all doctors who participate in the group chat to be on the same page and quickly share their findings with the other colleagues. For long-term conditions, such group chats will be the place to discuss the patient’s progress and adjust the treatment as necessary.

Group chats allow getting the opinions of doctors in other geographic locations without the need in traveling or sending the patient’s records up and down. This way, the diagnosis can be made sooner, and the treatment can start earlier.

File upload

A patient’s record includes dozens of different documents in various formats — doctor’s notes, photos, ultrasound images, X-rays, CAT scans, test results. A chat allows exchanging such documents by uploading the corresponding files. This way, the doctor can obtain the required document within seconds to examine it and give their opinion.

Today, chats support multiple file formats — audio, video, text documents, images — providing an effective medium of instant information exchange. This feature will be useful both in doctor-patient conversations and in group chats where several doctors can examine the uploaded file simultaneously and provide their opinions.

Patient reminders

A chat can be set up with push notifications to deliver patient reminders. You can configure the chat to notify of upcoming doctor appointments or regular checkups.

Another option is to use the notification feature to remind the patient of taking their medicines or doing home tests, such as blood sugar tests. With timed notifications delivered to their smartphones, patients can be more confident about their treatment and will not worry about missing their medicines.

After a reminder of taking a test, the patient can use the same healthcare messenger to send the test results to the doctor.

Appointment management and other administrative matters

Of course, a text chat between a patient and a clinic or doctor’s office is the perfect place to manage their appointments. Scheduling, rescheduling or canceling appointments via chat is much more effective than calling the clinic.

The same chat can be used to settle insurance matters, discuss the doctor’s bills, send the patient’s data for their personal records.

QuickBlox solution for healthcare messengers

QuickBlox offers an API and SDK allowing to set up secure and easily customizable healthcare messenger solutions of any scale and complexity. When dealing with healthcare solutions, we pay special attention to data security and protection. Our solutions are compliant with the government regulations applicable to healthcare service providers.

We welcome healthcare institutions to discuss the implementation of a messenger as part of their patient service. We are sure that an advanced communication solution will bring significant cost and time savings both for your business and your patients. Contact us at enterprise@quickblox.com for a detailed consultation, and our experts will be glad to help you.