Routine bookings handled
Find a slot, hold it, confirm. AI takes care of the calendar work and the confirmation message.
Solution · Clinics
Routine bookings handled. Clinical questions escalated.
OrcaLinq books appointments, handles rescheduling, and refuses clinical advice — routing those questions to your team with a Wake audit trail.
Why this fits
Booking is repeatable. Clinical advice is not.
AI is excellent at the high-volume routine work clinics handle every day — booking, rescheduling, location, hours, parking, what-to-bring. The platform is engineered to refuse clinical questions and hand them to a clinician.
Clinical questions escalate
Symptom, diagnosis, medication, or treatment topics are routed to a clinician or front-desk endpoint with a policy note. Always.
Pre-visit forms
Structured intake collected through chat with explicit consent. Wake audit trail captures what was asked and answered.
Multi-channel continuity
Booking on the website, reminder on WhatsApp, follow-up via email — same conversation thread, no lost context.
Conversation example
Booking a slot, escalating a clinical question
A common pattern: a patient mixes a routine request with a clinical one. The AI handles what it should, escalates what it shouldn't.
Patient (web widget): "Hi, can I book an appointment with Dr Patel for next week?"
AI: "Of course. Dr Patel's next openings are Tuesday 10:00, Wednesday 14:30, or Thursday 16:00. Which works for you?"
Patient: "Tuesday 10. Also I've been getting headaches a lot, what should I do?"
AI: "Booking Tuesday 10:00 with Dr Patel — confirmed, you'll get a confirmation by email and WhatsApp. For the headaches, I'm not able to give clinical advice, but I can let our front desk know so a nurse can call you back today, or you can wait to discuss with Dr Patel on Tuesday. Which would you prefer?"
Patient: "Call me back today."
AI: "Got it. Forwarding to our front desk now — they'll call within the next two hours. If anything feels urgent before then, please use the emergency contact in your area."
Front desk (back-office, 12:14 PM): Wake entry shows the booking, the clinical-question handoff, the agreed callback window, and the patient's phone. Nurse calls within 90 minutes.
The AI booked. The AI did not diagnose. The clinician decides the medical answer. Wake has the trail.
Limits and consent
What we will not do
- No clinical advice. AI does not diagnose, prescribe, recommend treatment, or interpret test results.
- No silent data collection. Intake collection is consented, named, and logged.
- No retention by default. Retention windows are configurable per channel and policy. Sensitive data can be redacted from agent-visible transcripts.
- No prescription refills via AI. Even routine refill requests are routed to a clinician — refill policy varies and is not safe to automate.
- No medical records lookup unless explicitly wired. If your EHR is connected, lookups are scoped, audited, and consented per request.
- No promises on insurance coverage. Coverage questions route to billing or front desk; AI never guesses.
Recommended setup
What a typical clinic configures
- Website widget on every service page and the contact page, with the service slug pre-filled.
- WhatsApp Cloud API for reminders, confirmations, and patient-initiated rescheduling.
- Calendar integration — your practice management system, Google Calendar, or a clinic-specific scheduler.
- Approved knowledge: clinicians and specialties, hours, address, parking, what to bring, insurance accepted, fees (where public).
- Routing policy: bookings → reception; clinical questions → on-call clinician; emergencies → emergency-services guidance + on-call page; insurance → billing.
- Refusal templates for clinical advice attempts, prescription requests, and outcome predictions.
- Retention and redaction policy agreed in writing before launch, signed off by the practice's privacy lead.
Features used
What's doing the work
Sonar
Reads urgency on every message. Emergency keywords bypass booking entirely and route to crisis guidance + on-call page.
Matriarch
Routes by specialty, requested clinician, language, and urgency. On-call rotation respected.
Knowledge base AI
Hours, location, fees, what-to-bring, accepted insurance — all answered from approved sources with citations.
AI human handoff
Forced handoff on clinical advice, prescription, emergency, and insurance-coverage questions. Confidence threshold cannot override these policies.
Wake
Every booking, every refusal, every clinical handoff logged. Auditable, defensible, exportable for compliance review.
Metrics that matter
What clinics see after launch
- After-hours bookings captured — routine slots are booked overnight without staff effort.
- No-show rate — drops with proactive reminders and easy reply-to-reschedule on WhatsApp.
- Front-desk phone time — reclaimed from booking churn, redirected to in-clinic patient experience.
- First-reply time on Saturday afternoons — goes from 'next business day' to seconds.
- Patient-experience reviews — improve as routine logistics get fast, friendly answers.
Clinics FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Will the AI give clinical advice?
No. The platform is configured to refuse clinical questions and route them to a human — clinician, front desk, or designated endpoint. The AI handles bookings, rescheduling, location, hours, parking, and routine logistics only. The refusal is policy-driven and audit-logged on every refusal.
Is this HIPAA / GDPR appropriate?
The platform is designed with tenant isolation at the data plane, encrypted credentials, configurable retention, and a Wake audit trail. Specific compliance posture depends on your channel mix, the data you collect, and your data-processing agreements. Discuss requirements with us before going live; we sign DPAs and BAAs where appropriate.
Can it handle rescheduling?
Yes. Connected calendar tools let the AI propose, hold, and confirm appointment slots. Cancellation and rescheduling follow the same flow, with a Wake audit entry on each change. No-show fees and rescheduling-window policies are tenant-configured.
What about intake forms?
On channels that support it, the AI can collect basic intake data through a structured conversation with clear consent prompts. LIFF on LINE, a custom in-page form on web, or a structured chat flow on WhatsApp are all supported. Sensitive fields (insurance, history) can be redacted from the visible transcript.
Can patients reach a specific clinician?
Yes. Routing rules can match on requested clinician, specialty, location, language, or urgency. Out-of-rota requests follow the policy you configure — typically routed to the senior clinician on call.
What about emergencies?
Emergency intent is detected by Sonar and the AI will not attempt to book — it provides emergency-services guidance per your jurisdiction's standard, refuses any other answer, and pages the on-call clinician immediately.
Can it remind patients about appointments?
Yes — outbound reminders via WhatsApp, SMS, or email follow channel-specific template rules. Patients can confirm, reschedule, or cancel by replying; the response loops back into the same routing policy.
Related pages
Keep exploring
See booking and escalation in action.
Bring a sample inquiry or two — including the kind that mixes booking and clinical questions. We'll show what the routing decision looks like for each, and how Wake captures the audit trail.