COMMUNICATION
The patient who does the work themselves
Reminders that go out on their own, one link instead of five phone calls, and an intake form that ends the copying of names and ID numbers by hand.
Messages go out from your own account with the SMS provider, with your clinic’s name as the sender.
The same system that holds the appointment and issues the receipt sends the messages — which is why it knows what to say and to whom, without being told twice.
By 21 August 2026, 834 messages had gone out to patients since 21 June, across both practices — 691 of them automatic: 395 reminders, 262 booking confirmations and 34 from the automatic recall, which has since been retired (September 2026 — why, below).
What goes out on its own
This is the one explicit exception to “nothing happens without a person”: the messages around the appointment go out automatically, on rules you set — and you switch them off. Everything else goes out when somebody presses send.
- Appointment reminder
- with a confirm or cancel button inside the message.
- Confirmation
- the moment an appointment is booked.
- No-show follow-up
- the system chases the person who did not come, not your memory.
- Post-op check-in
- a few days after a procedure in a treatment category you choose.
- Waiting list
- tomorrow’s ten-thirty was cancelled? the people waiting are told.
- And anything you write
- manually, from the card or from the appointment.
And the recall — sent by a person
Until September 2026 Odontia had an automatic recall: it found the patients the practice had not seen in a while and messaged them by itself. We retired it, and the setting is gone from the owner’s screen. The filter was too broad, and a system that messages hundreds of people nobody looked at is dangerous, not convenient. No patient is recalled automatically any more.
Three screens took its place, and a person drives all three — none of them sends anything on its own.
One thing is worth saying out loud: a list’s name never leaves the practice. It is not put into the message, it is not an email subject, and no patient ever sees it. “Waiting for the oral surgeon” is how you organise yourselves, not information that travels.
- Loose ends
- A shared notepad for the whole practice: one line of free text, optionally tied to a patient. No date, no assignee, no priority — which is exactly why it gets written in two seconds. You tick it off when it is done.
- Check-ups
- The same line, with a date. From the patient’s card: 4, 6 or 12 months, or a date you pick — and the day it lands on is shown before you press save. After that it is a diary you open yourself, over whatever date range you like.
- Patient lists
- You name a list — “Recall”, “Waiting for the oral surgeon” — and put patients on it one at a time, by hand, with your own note against each of them. There is no bulk add and no saved filter that fills the list by itself: the people on it are the people a person thought about.
- How long since they were treated
- Every member shows when they were last treated, with four filters — 6 months, 1, 2, 3 years — and a count on each. The filter binds the send too: if the screen says 9 of 18, the message goes to 9.
- Who would receive this?
- Before you send, a list of names: who will receive it, who will not and why — archived, asked not to be messaged, no usable phone or email — and what it will cost. You can read it without sending anything and without spending anything.
- The send
- You write the wording and save it on the list. There is no ready-made text in any language, and a list with no text cannot send. One message per patient goes out on the channel you picked, and lands in each person’s own history like any other message.
SMS, then email — only on a proven failure
The owner sets the channel order. If the SMS provably did not go — wrong number, provider refusal — the same message is tried by email.
The detail that matters: an unknown outcome is not a failure. A message we cannot confirm was delivered stops there, rather than being sent a second time.
The wording is written by each clinic — no “corporate” phrasing that does not sound like you. And the links are short, so an SMS does not split into three.
The patient portal — one link, not five phone calls
A link travels inside the reminder. The patient opens it and sees all of their upcoming appointments — time, dentist, which practice, contact details.
They confirm
and the appointment’s status changes in your calendar immediately.
They request a cancellation
or a new time — as a request that joins a queue for the front desk to see.
They add it to their phone
to their own calendar, with one tap.
The intake form — the new patient writes their own history
A link or a QR code at the desk: the patient fills in details, history, allergies, consents and a signature — from their phone, before they even sit down, in four languages (Greek, English, German, French). It can also be served on an address of your own, carrying your logo: you upload it yourself from the settings, without waiting on us for anything.
And here is what separates it from a plain online form: what the patient sends is not written into the record. It appears as a Proposal, a person reads it and approves it — and only then does it become structured history.
When a parent fills it in for a child, the document changes voice: it asks separately for the parent’s details and who to call first, and the notices and the declaration speak about the patient and about the parent — not about the signer as if they were the patient.
The copying of names, phone numbers and ID numbers by hand stops.
And the switch that stops everything
One setting on the patient stops every automatic message, on every channel. Nobody has to remember to skip them, and it does not depend on who is sending.
The consents and signatures the patient gives in the intake form are recorded alongside their history.
And it is not one form for everybody
A general dental practice and an orthodontic practice do not ask a new patient the same things. The sheet they hand over at the desk is a different sheet — and until recently the form pretended it was not.
Now the practice’s mode decides the questions. It is declared once and holds everywhere: not a setting somebody fills in per form, not hidden menus, and not two different products. And the check-up message is not our wording either: you write it and save it on the list you are sending — so an orthodontic practice says “orthodontic check-up” in its own words.
General dental practice
Personal details, a full medical history with a structured condition checklist, medication, smoking and alcohol, dental history, and an “About you” section.
Orthodontic practice
An orthodontist’s seven questions: the referring dentist or paediatric dentist, injuries to the jaws and teeth, grinding or clenching, surgery to the face or jaws, allergies, medication, other medical problems.
What is not asked is not sent
A section that does not appear on screen does not go out empty either. The form never speaks for questions it did not ask — and the fields it leaves out stay on the patient’s card as usual, for the practice to fill in.
HOW A PRACTICE GETS IN
Would you like to see it?
A short tour of the real system, with no commitment at all — and, if you like, a test practice with your own data sitting quietly to one side.
- 1 A short tour of the real system
- 2 A test practice with your own data
- 3 Signatures before the first patient goes in