Creating an appointment reminder app with Python SDK
The ability to schedule and send SMS messages can elevate your business communications to the next level. There are a number of applications for this functionality, including scheduling messages tailored to individual recipients.
For example, you could schedule SMS messages that act as reminders for various appointment types. This could include sending business meeting reminders, sending enrollment reminders, or sending hospital appointment reminders. In the healthcare sector, especially, appointment reminders mitigate costs by reducing no-shows. They also make it easier for patients to attend appointments. SMS is one of the most effective channels for this, having an engagement rate of up to 98%.
Note:
Before you can get started, you need the following already set up:
- Set all SMS API configuration settings.
- Python and a familiarity with how to create a new app.
In this tutorial, we will use the Sinch SDK to create a hospital appointment reminder application. This lightweight web app includes a UI that allows hospital administrative users to input existing appointment data. This data will be used by the application to automatically schedule appointment reminder messages that will be sent to the specified patient/recipient two hours prior to their appointment.
Note:
For this tutorial, we include a UI that allows administrative users to manually input appointment times. This demonstrates the functionality of the app and allows you to test its capabilities. In a production environment, it may be more efficient to connect the app to an appointment database and automatically import the appointments. We encourage users to lean into the power of our SDKs by using our guides as a springboard for their own creative projects.
Scheduling appointments
The application includes a UI enabling users to schedule messages:
The scheduling form contains a number of fields that, in this scenario, are to be populated by an administrative user. These fields include:
- The doctor's name
- The patient's name
- The appointment date
- The appointment time
- The patient's mobile number
Note:
This information will be used to send an SMS reminder to the patient a couple of hours before they are due to attend their appointment. When the appointment is successfully set and the corresponding message scheduled, the user is redirected to a success page.
Preventing invalid appointments
To prevent users from entering appointments too close in the future, or appointments that have already passed, the application contains validation logic to prevent appointments from being entered that are less than two hours and five minutes into the future.
Note:
While this tutorial provides more real-world context and supporting material than some of our other guides, it is still intended for demonstrative purposes. In a production environment, you will have to modify any provided code samples to ensure that you maintain the security, efficacy, and stability of your solutions.
