Patient engagement is the software that handles a patient before and after the doctor: answering the phone, booking the appointment, sending the reminder, collecting the forms and following the patient up after a hospital stay. In a clinic, this is the work of the front desk. It takes much of the staff's time, and it is where patients form most of their opinion of the clinic.
Most products in this zone are sold to clinics and hospitals in the United States, and many of them are built by engineers in India. Patient scheduling and intake software books the appointment, sends a text reminder the day before and collects the allergy and insurance forms online. Large hospital groups add a digital front door, the website or app where a patient starts and is sent to the right kind of care. A small dental or medical practice may use one patient communication platform for its calls, texts, online reviews and payments. During and after a hospital stay, a patient engagement platform runs the screen at the bedside and the text messages that guide the patient at home.
In India, the most familiar product in this zone is the doctor appointment booking app. A patient searches for a doctor by speciality and area, sees the open slots and books one.
Each of these products reads and writes the clinic's appointment book, which is part of the clinic's EHR. So a booking made in an app appears in the record that the doctor opens.
The newest product is the AI medical receptionist. It is a voice agent that answers the clinic's phone in natural speech and books the appointment itself. It passes to a person only the calls that need one. It is one kind of AI customer service agent. Its hardest task is triage: deciding how urgently a caller must be seen.