How Can Diagnostic Labs Remind Patients About Fasting Before a Test?

Short answer: give an AI voice agent the next day's bookings and your lab's preparation instructions for each test. It calls each patient the evening before, tells them when to stop eating and what they may still have — in their own language and in your lab's words — confirms the visit or home-collection time, and sends the instructions on WhatsApp. Questions about medicines or symptoms are passed to your staff, not answered by the agent.

Why fasting reminders matter

A patient who eats breakfast before a fasting test usually means a wasted visit: the sample can't be used, the patient comes back another day, and a home-collection trip is lost. The instructions were probably given at booking, days earlier. A short call the evening before, in the patient's language, is when the reminder is actually useful.

How it works, step by step

1. Put your instructions in the knowledge base. Upload your test preparation guide as text, a text-layer PDF or a CSV with one row per test, so each test's instructions stay together. The agent answers from what you upload, not from general knowledge.
2. Load tomorrow's bookings. Patient name, phone, language, test, time and whether it is a lab visit or home collection — from a spreadsheet, or your lab system places each call through the outbound call API.
3. The agent calls the evening before. "Namaste Meena ji, kal subah aapka blood test hai. Raat se kuch na khayein — sirf paani pee sakti hain. Kya aap 8 baje aa paayengi?" — with the fasting instructions for that test, as your lab wrote them.
4. Confirm or move the slot. If the patient can't make it, the agent can offer another time and book it through tool calling into your calendar or booking system. For home collection, it checks the address and a landmark.
5. Send the instructions on WhatsApp. The preparation steps and the time follow as an approved template, so the patient has them in writing in the morning.
6. Hand over anything medical. "Can I take my diabetes tablet?" goes to your staff — write that into the agent's instructions, and transfer the call or schedule a callback from a person.

Timing and edge cases

• Calling hours: outbound calls run between 9am and 9pm IST, so a reminder for an early-morning fasting test goes out the evening before, inside that window.
• No answer: smart retry calls a busy line back in minutes and an unanswered one after an hour or more, and voicemail detection can leave the instructions as a message (on Plivo and ThinnestAI numbers). The WhatsApp message still reaches patients who never pick up.
• Several tests at once: pass every test booked for that patient into the call, with the combined preparation your lab wants for them, so the patient hears one set of instructions rather than conflicting ones.

Patient data

• Recording is off by default — a per-agent switch you decide on. Every call has a transcript and an outcome.
• Customer data is stored in India (Mumbai).
• Think about what a WhatsApp message reveals: a test name can disclose a condition, so keep the message to the preparation steps and time where that matters.

What you need to start

A phone number, your preparation guide in the knowledge base, and tomorrow's booking list. See the healthcare and hospitals pages for full reminder call flows.