Company
Date Published
Author
Ankit Gupta
Word count
1219
Language
English
Hacker News points
None

Summary

Twilio's message scheduling capability allows users to automatically send appointment reminders via text or other channels at predetermined times, reducing no-shows and ensuring patients receive the care they need. To get started, a free Twilio account is required, along with review of the docs for message scheduling capabilities. An example using Airtable as a backend demonstrates how to integrate Twilio's messaging API into an appointment scheduling system, allowing users to personalize messages and schedule follow-up reminders. The setup involves calling the Twilio Messaging API and providing information such as To, MessagingServiceSid, Body, Status, and Delivery Date/Time in ISO 8601 format. Once a message is scheduled and a response is received from Twilio, it can be populated into an Airtable database with relevant information, including appointment ID, message SID, patient phone number, appointment date/time, message delivery date/time, status, and message body. A flow for appointment check-in and canceling upon receiving a "missed appointment" text has also been set up to ensure seamless integration with existing EHR systems.