The Problem
A single-consultant cardiology clinic in Karachi was running everything through one front-desk attendant: phone bookings, WhatsApp enquiries, appointment reminders, follow-up calls, lab report distribution, and ad-hoc patient questions. The consultant was losing 30 minutes a day to repeated questions ("how do I prep for a stress test?") and the front desk was working 11-hour days to keep up. Patient no-shows were running at 23% because reminders were getting forgotten.
The brief was simple. give the clinic its evenings back without losing the personal touch their patients valued.
What I Built
A connected automation stack that lives between WhatsApp, Calendly, Google Sheets, and a Claude-powered triage layer:
- Patient intake bot: incoming WhatsApp messages get classified by Claude Haiku (new patient / appointment booking / lab results / general question / urgent symptom). Routine cases follow a scripted flow; anything tagged urgent pings the consultant directly.
- Booking + reminder loop: the bot collects the patient's name, age, and reason for visit, checks consultant availability via Calendly, and books. T-24h and T-2h reminders go out automatically with prep instructions for the specific procedure.
- Lab report distribution: a daily n8n workflow pulls new lab PDFs from the lab partner's email, matches them to patient records by name + DOB via Claude, and sends them on WhatsApp with a one-line summary the consultant has pre-approved.
- Follow-up sequences: post-visit, patients receive a check-in at day 3 and day 14. Replies indicating concern are escalated to the consultant; routine "I'm fine" replies are logged.
Outcome
Within 8 weeks of launch, the clinic absorbed a 38% volume increase without adding staff. The consultant got his evenings back; the front desk dropped to a 5-hour shift focused on in-person patients. The cost of the entire stack (Twilio + Claude API + n8n self-hosted) is under PKR 18,000/month.