WhatsApp for Clinics and Hospitals in Bangladesh

A diagnostic centre in Uttara gets the same messages every morning: "Dr. Rahman ki aj boshben?", "CBC test er dam koto?", "report kokhon pabo?". The front desk answers the phone, the WhatsApp number and the Facebook Page at once, while patients stand at the counter. Messages pile up, and an anxious patient waiting for a report gets no reply for hours. A healthcare chatbot is an AI assistant that answers administrative patient questions from a clinic's own documents and passes anything medical to qualified staff. SaleMag runs one for clinics and hospitals on WhatsApp and Messenger.

How can clinics and hospitals use WhatsApp?

Clinics and hospitals in Bangladesh can use WhatsApp for the administrative side of patient contact: schedules, prices, reports, directions and serial requests. SaleMag connects your number to the official WhatsApp Business API and puts WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram and Telegram chats in one shared inbox. Your front desk works from a browser instead of one phone.

The table shows common patient messages and what SaleMag does with each.

What can a healthcare chatbot answer safely?

A healthcare chatbot in SaleMag can safely answer only what you put in its knowledge base, such as schedules, prices, report times and directions. The AI chatbot, set up as an AI customer support agent, answers from your files, web pages and FAQs, not from general medical knowledge. A good knowledge base for a hospital or diagnostic centre includes:

• doctor schedules by department and chamber days (an Excel sheet works)
• the test price list, with any package prices
• report collection times and how to collect reports
• preparation notes your clinicians have written, such as fasting before a test
• visiting hours, address, directions and parking
• documents to bring and how serials work

Keep patient records and reports out of the knowledge base. When a question is not covered, the AI hands over instead of guessing, and you can set a fallback message such as "Our front desk will reply shortly."

How do I stop the AI from giving medical advice?

Stop SaleMag's AI from giving medical advice by writing the rule into its instructions, testing it with real patient questions and reviewing chats every week. In the system prompt, state that the assistant handles administrative questions only. It must never diagnose, suggest or change medicine, interpret test results, or judge whether a symptom is serious. For any symptom, medicine or report question, it should say a staff member will reply and hand the chat over. For anything that sounds urgent, it should give the emergency phone number you specify, and then hand over.

This is an instruction, not a guarantee. Before going live, try the questions patients really send, in Bangla and Banglish, and check that the AI declines and hands over every time. Read a sample of chats each week. Human handover also happens whenever a patient asks for a person, and the team is notified. After a staff member replies, the AI stays quiet in that chat for 15 minutes.

How do patients request a doctor appointment on WhatsApp?

Patients request a doctor appointment (a serial) through a SaleMag automation that collects the details and hands the request to the front desk, who confirm it. SaleMag has no doctor calendar and no slot availability, so the front desk still decides the serial. In the automation flow builder:

1. Trigger on a keyword such as "serial" or "appointment".
2. Assign the chat to the front desk first. Once a chat is assigned to a person, the AI stops replying there, so the flow and the AI do not both answer.
3. Ask for the patient's name, age, doctor and preferred day. Each answer is saved in the flow, and an update contact fields step writes it to the contact.
4. Optionally add a row to a Google Sheet your front desk already uses.
5. Send a message that the request is received and staff will confirm.

The front desk sees the answers in the inbox and replies with the confirmed serial.

Can SaleMag send appointment reminders and report-ready messages?

Partly. SaleMag can send reminders and report-ready messages when staff or your lab software start them, or after a set delay in an automation, but it cannot schedule a message for a specific appointment date by itself. An automation's wait step counts minutes, hours or days from when the flow reaches it. That suits a follow-up such as "how was your visit?" two days later.

For date-based reminders and report-ready notices, use one of these:

• staff send an approved utility template from the inbox
• your hospital or lab software calls an automation webhook, or the developer API, to send the template
• patients not on WhatsApp get an SMS through a Bangladeshi gateway with bulk SMS

Outside the 24-hour window, WhatsApp needs an approved template. Health check-up packages and offers are marketing templates and go only to patients who have opted in.

How does SaleMag handle patient privacy?

SaleMag limits who can read patient chats through workspace roles, but it does not hold healthcare compliance certifications. An agent sees the chats assigned to them plus chats nobody has picked up yet, so assign patient chats promptly. A moderator sees and assigns every chat, which suits a front-desk supervisor. A viewer can see records and reports but not conversations. Internal notes stay inside the team.

Be aware that AI replies are generated by the provider whose API key you add: OpenAI, Anthropic or Google Gemini. Patient messages in AI-handled chats are sent to that provider. Decide with your management what may be discussed on chat.

Which channels should a hospital or clinic connect?

A hospital or clinic should connect WhatsApp for patients who already have its number and Messenger for people who find it through the Facebook Page. On your website, the website chat widget adds a WhatsApp button so a visitor can message the front desk directly. All of them land in the same SaleMag inbox.

Get started

Upload your doctor schedule and test price list, write strict instructions, and test the AI against your hardest patient questions before linking it to your number. Create an account or see pricing.