WhatsApp Business for clinics: what doctors should know before using it

What is the difference between the WhatsApp Business app and the Platform?

The Business app is free, installs on a phone like normal WhatsApp, and gives you a business profile, quick replies and labels. One person holds the phone. That is the limitation — and for a clinic with two staff and forty messages a day, it is usually enough.

The Business Platform is what allows an assistant to reply automatically, several staff to work the same number, and reminders to go out on a schedule. It charges per conversation rather than per message, and the cost is modest at clinic volumes.

Do you need a new phone number?

No, and generally you should not get one. Your existing clinic number is already printed on your prescriptions, saved in patients' phones and listed on your Google profile. Changing it loses all of that.

A number can be moved onto the Business Platform while staying the same number. What matters is that it is not simultaneously logged into the normal WhatsApp app — that is the one thing that genuinely forces a change.

What are the rules about messaging patients first?

This is where clinics most often go wrong. When a patient messages you, a 24-hour window opens in which you can reply freely. Outside that window, you can only start a conversation using a message template that WhatsApp has approved in advance.

In practice this means appointment reminders and recall messages have to be set up as templates before you need them. It also means you cannot send patients general promotional messages whenever you like, which is a healthy constraint.

What about patient privacy?

Settle three things before you start. Who at the clinic can see the conversations. How long you keep them. And what happens to a patient's messages if they ask you to delete them.

Under India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act, a patient can withdraw consent and ask for their data to be removed, and you need to be able to honour that. Keep clinical detail out of WhatsApp entirely — appointments, fees and logistics belong there, reports and results do not.

• Decide which staff have access, and remove it when they leave
• Set a retention period and stick to it
• Honour STOP requests immediately and permanently
• Keep diagnoses, reports and test results out of the channel

What does it cost?

The Business app is free. On the Platform, WhatsApp charges per conversation, and the rate depends on whether the clinic or the patient started it. Service conversations started by a patient are the cheapest category and are often free within a monthly allowance.

For a typical single-location clinic the monthly WhatsApp charge usually lands somewhere in the low thousands of rupees. Any provider setting this up for you should be passing that through at cost and showing it separately on your invoice.