AI chatbot for clinics and telehealth services

An AI chatbot for clinics is a website assistant that handles the questions your front desk answers all day: how to book, whether you offer video visits, which insurance you accept, what to bring to a first appointment and how to get a prescription refill. Built with InstantKnowledgeBot, it answers only from your clinic's own documents and is designed to stay out of clinical territory.

This page covers what a clinic or telehealth chatbot is good for, where its limits are, and how to set one up responsibly.

What can a clinic chatbot handle?

Most of the traffic on a clinic website is administrative. People want to know whether you can see them, when, for how much and what to expect. A chatbot can answer these instantly, at any hour, in the patient's language:

• Services and specialties, in person and by video, and who each is for.
• Booking, rescheduling and cancelling, including your no-show policy.
• Hours, locations, parking and accessibility.
• Insurance plans accepted and self-pay prices.
• First-visit preparation: ID, insurance card, medication list and forms.
• Processes for refills, test results and records requests.

How does the template keep the chatbot out of clinical advice?

The clinic and telehealth template ships with instructions written for healthcare. You can read the summary on the templates page. In short, the bot:

1. Doesn't give medical advice, diagnoses, triage or treatment and medication recommendations, and never interprets symptoms, test results or images. It suggests booking a visit instead.
2. Puts emergencies first. If a visitor describes something like chest pain, trouble breathing, signs of stroke, severe bleeding or thoughts of self-harm, it tells them to call their local emergency number (911 in the US) or go to the nearest emergency department before saying anything else. For a mental-health crisis in the US, it also mentions calling or texting 988.
3. Doesn't ask for or repeat sensitive health details. To follow up on a personal case, it invites the visitor to leave contact details for a callback or to book.
4. Stays warm, calm and plain-spoken.

On top of that, every InstantKnowledgeBot bot is instructed to answer only from your knowledge base and to say when something isn't covered. That's what you want on a healthcare site: if your documents don't mention a service, the bot says so and points to your phone number rather than guessing. Read more in why AI chatbots hallucinate and how to prevent it.

What should a clinic upload?

The template includes a checklist and a starter FAQ with placeholders such as [booking link] and [phone number]. Replace every placeholder before going live. The most useful documents are:

• A services page or brochure, with which services are available by video.
• Your booking and cancellation policy.
• Hours and locations, including parking and accessibility notes.
• Your insurance list and self-pay prices.
• New patient instructions and links to forms.
• How to request refills, results and records.
• Your patient privacy notice and main phone number.

If most of this is already on your website, import it from the URL (a single page, the whole site or a sitemap); patient portal and login pages are skipped. You can also upload PDF, DOCX, TXT, Markdown, CSV, HTML or JSON files (up to 50 MB each) or paste text. See preparing documents for an AI chatbot for structure tips.

How do callback requests work?

On the Pro and Agency plans, and during the 14-day Pro trial, lead capture can show a short form when a visitor wants to book or talk to someone. The clinic preset is titled "Request a callback", asks for name, phone and a message, and tells the patient: "Please don't include medical details here." The success message reminds them to call you or their local emergency number if it's urgent.

Each request is emailed to you with the conversation and stored in your dashboard, where your team can mark it contacted, qualified, won or lost. Step-by-step: set up chatbot lead capture.

Is a website chatbot appropriate for healthcare?

It can be, if you keep its scope narrow. Good practice:

• Use it for public, administrative information you'd already publish on your website.
• Don't use it as a symptom checker or a substitute for clinical judgment.
• Don't collect health information through the chat or lead form.
• Keep your patient portal for anything involving a patient record.

InstantKnowledgeBot doesn't claim HIPAA compliance and isn't a clinical system. Chat conversations are stored so you can review them and are deleted automatically after a retention window; see our privacy policy and our overview of AI chatbot privacy and security.

How do telehealth services use it?

Telehealth visitors usually have practical questions about the technology and process: which device and app they need, how to join a video visit, what happens if the connection drops, which states or regions you serve and how prescriptions are sent. Put those answers in a short FAQ document and the bot covers them at any hour, when your support line is closed.

Because the bot replies in the visitor's language, a single English knowledge base can serve Spanish-speaking or other patients too. See multilingual website chatbots.

How do you get started?

1. Sign up free and create a bot from the Clinic & telehealth template.
2. Import your clinic's website from its URL, upload your documents, or paste the starter FAQ and fill in every placeholder.
3. Test it in the Test tab with real questions, including an "emergency" one, to see the response.
4. Copy the chat bubble code from Embed & share and paste it on your site.

The free plan includes one bot and 100 hosted AI messages a month; compare plans for lead capture and higher limits on the pricing page. For a dental practice, see the dental chatbot page.