The patient never installs anything

Booking happens in the app they already use every day. There is no password to remember and no form to fill in. The first message can be free text, in whatever words they would use on the phone. After that the software offers buttons and lists, because tapping cannot be misspelt and an elderly patient will not retype a time.

Only the times you have actually opened

The slots offered come from each doctor's weekly OPD sessions, minus leave, minus anything already booked. You decide which sessions patients may book themselves and how close to the hour online booking stops, so reception keeps whatever it needs for walk-ins.

The token and the cabin arrive before the turn

Rather than a waiting room full of people who came at opening time, each patient gets their token number, the cabin and how to find it, shortly before they are due. Clinics that switch this on usually see the corridor thin out within a fortnight.

Inside the clinic it is one record

The appointment becomes a token in the queue, the queue opens into the consultation, the consultation prints the prescription, and the visit carries into the bill with the consultation fee already at the right rate. The name the patient typed on WhatsApp is the name on the prescription and the name on the bill.