What healthcare providers send
| Message | Type | How it is sent |
|---|---|---|
| Appointment reminders (day before, morning of) | Transactional, scheduled | Upload tomorrow's list, or API from the scheduling system |
| Appointment confirmations by reply | Two-way | "Reply YES to confirm" — replies thread into the conversation |
| Results-ready notices | Transactional | API from the lab system, or upload |
| Medication, refill and follow-up prompts | Transactional, scheduled | Scheduled per patient or group |
| Vaccination and screening campaigns | Programme broadcast | Contact group per district or programme, scheduled |
| Outbreak and public health notices | Broadcast | Immediate send to the relevant group |
| Clinic hours and service changes | Broadcast | Contact group |
Appointment reminders that cut no-shows
A reminder the day before, with the time and the clinic, is the single highest-value message a health facility sends. Two ways to run it:
- From tomorrow's list. Export appointments with the patient's number, name, time and clinic; upload with a template; schedule for the afternoon before.
- From the scheduling system. The system calls the SMS API when an appointment is booked and again the day before, storing the message ID on the appointment.
Add "Reply YES to confirm or NO to reschedule" and the responses land in your inbox threaded against the patient's number, so the desk can free slots early. See two-way SMS.
Results and follow-up
A "results are ready, please visit" message is enough — it tells the patient what to do without putting a diagnosis in a text. Follow-up and refill prompts work the same way: a date, an instruction, a number to call. Scheduled messages let a nurse set a series of prompts at the end of a visit rather than remembering each one.
Health programmes and campaigns
Immunisation drives, screening days, malaria and cholera notices: a programme keeps contact groups by district, facility or cohort and sends a scheduled campaign to each, with delivery reports per recipient so coverage can be reported. Keywords on the shared short code let community members register interest or report symptoms by text, routed to the programme's inbox.
Reaching patients on any phone
Patients in peri-urban and rural areas are on basic handsets without data, and SMS is the only channel that reliably reaches them. Messages deliver to MTN, Airtel and Zamtel numbers alike, and a branded sender ID (the facility or programme name, up to 11 characters, approved on an authorization letter) makes the message recognisable.
Patient privacy in SMS
Treat the text itself as visible to anyone who picks up the phone. Keep to name, time, place and instruction; leave diagnoses, results and medication names out. Phone numbers and message content are personal data under Zambia's Data Protection Act 2021, and health information is sensitive data with additional obligations; the platform's Privacy notice describes how message data is handled and Ontech Solutions is registered with the Data Protection Commission (DP000394). Every send is logged with who sent it and when.
Paying for SMS as a clinic or programme
No contract: the facility creates a free account with trial credits and buys credits by mobile money at volume rates. Programmes with high volumes or several facilities can share one credit balance across staff logins through an organisation, or arrange enterprise terms via info@ontech.co.zm.