The actions described in this lesson require a Manager permission on your clinic.
Overview
By default, Embodia uses email to send your patients information and notifications about their account and upcoming consults. If you would also like to send SMS notifications to your patients about their upcoming consults, you can enable the SMS notifications on your account by connecting a valid Twilio account.
Twilio is a leading global communication solution that allows you to get started in minutes and its pricing is pay-as-you-go (learn more about Twilio pricing here). You can sign up for an account directly on Twilio.
Please note that SMS notifications are not a substitute for email notifications. To receive SMS notifications, the patient must have an email address on file. This is because SMS (short for Short Messaging Service) notifications will include limited information. Embodia cannot convey all the needed information to your patients using SMS only (such as their login credentials, the links to questionnaires and consent forms, etc.).
Connect your Twilio account
A paid Twilio account is needed to enable SMS notifications. Twilio trial accounts are too restrictive; if you connect a trial account, Embodia will not be able to send SMS notifications on your behalf.
Once you've signed up for an account on Twilio and obtained your unique phone number, you will need to add your Twilio credentials to Embodia. To do so, click on the Settings tab in the top nav bar, and then on SMS under the Communication & branding section.
Click on Connect my Twilio account, and fill out the form with your Account SID, Auth token, and My Twilio phone number. This information can be found on your Twilio console (see this resource for more information):
Once your account credentials have been added, Embodia will need to verify those credentials by sending a test SMS. Enter your phone number in the form and click on Validate my account:
If the credentials and the phone number you added are valid, your account will be validated, and Embodia can send SMS notifications on your behalf.
Set up SMS (text reminders) for consults
If the patient has a mobile number attached to their profile, Embodia will send up to 3 SMS messages to the patient if the consult is scheduled well in advance (more than 24 hours):
- One SMS about 24 hours before the consult;
- One SMS about 2 hours before the consult; and
- One SMS at a custom time that can be specified in the consult settings.
You can override this default behaviour by specifying your own consult settings.
What's included in SMS reminders
24-hour reminder for a consult
Hello <Patient's first name>, This is friendly reminder that your <consult duration>-minute consult with <Practitioner's full name> is scheduled for tomorrow, <consult date>, at <consult start time>.
2-hour reminder for a consult
Hello <Patient's first name>, This is friendly reminder that your <consult duration>-minute consult with <Practitioner's full name> will start soon. It is scheduled for <consult date> at <consult start time>.
Custom reminder for a consult
Hello <Patient's first name>, This is friendly reminder that your <consult duration>-minute consult with <Practitioner's full name> is scheduled for <consult date> at <consult start time>.
Adding a signature to every SMS sent
If you would like to include additional information in the SMS, you can provide a generic signature that will be included in every SMS sent by Embodia on your behalf. To do so, click on the Settings tab in the top nav bar, and then on SMS under the Communication & branding section. Under the Signature section, click on the Edit icon, and provide your signature.
SMS cost considerations
Twilio is pay-as-you-go and you can find the pricing for Twilio SMS here. There are 2 costs for Twilio:
- A fixed monthly cost for the phone number, highlighted under the "Phone number pricing" table.
- A variable cost based on how many SMS you send per month and the length of those SMS highlighted under the "SMS/MMS Pricing" table. Twilio charges "per segment" (more on segments below). The fee per segment is dependent on your location, but for this example, let's assume it is $0.01. So if the SMS sent takes only 1 segment, the cost will be $0.01per SMS, if it takes 2, it will be $0.02
A Twilio SMS Segment is 153 characters. The default SMS sent by Embodia has the following format:
Hello {patient_first_name}. This is a friendly reminder that your {duration}-minute consult with {practitioner_full_name} is scheduled for {date} at {time}.
- {duration} is usually 1 to 3 characters, but most of the cases 2 characters (such as "60")
- {date} has the following format: {day_of_the_week} {month} {date}, {year}. So the longest this can be is for a Wednesday (the day of the week that has the most characters) in September (the month of the year that has the most characters) which 28 characters
- {time}: is usually 13 characters (including the time zone)
So the default SMS sent can have up to 132 characters + the number of characters in the practitioner's full name + the number of characters in the patient's first name. If the practitioner's full name and the patient's first name is less than 21 characters, then the default SMS on Embodia will only take up one segment on Twilio. If you add a signature to the SMS (as outlined above), then you need to add the number of characters in the signature to determine the number of segments.