[Freeswitch-users] looking for a way to do appointment reminders

[Michael Collins]

Hi Brandon,

This is totally doable with FreeSWITCH. For you I recommend starting small
and working your way up. What I mean by that is that you should probably
get the basics down first, like learning how to do a simple dialplan entry
in FreeSWITCH, how to set up a SIP provider, how to set up a TTS engine
like svox/pico or a commercial one like Cepstral, how to do an originate on
the command line and then how to script that using something simple (like
fs_cli -x 'originate foo/bar') or more in depth (like ESL)...

Then there are the other questions, like:
How do you get the patient information out of the software? Is there an API?
Will you be keeping track of the results of your automated outbound calls?
If so, how will you get the results back into the software? Will you
auto-reschedule busy/no answer calls?
Do you want to leave a simple message with the called party even if a human
answers?
Or do you want to have a simple IVR that says something like: "you have an
appointment at [date/time]. press 1 to confirm. if you need to reschedule,
press 2."?
Will you want answering machine detection? If so you'll need to contact
FreeSWITCH Solutions about purchasing a license since this is not a free
module.

Last question: what programming skills do you have on staff there? If you
have basic shell scripting skills and/or Perl/PHP/Python/etc. skills then
you can probably build something yourself. If you don't have someone with
some programming skills then I strongly recommend that you find or hire
someone to assist. It's not impossible for a determined person to learn all
the skills required, however it will be a challenge.

Hope this helps!
-Michael

P.S. here is a really, really simple example of how to make an outbound
call from a shell script:

#!/bin/bash
# simple dialout script, assumes a gateway named 'flowroute'
#  and syntax: dialout.sh <phonenumber> <firstname> <lastname> <appt_
timestamp>
res=`fs_cli -x '{ignore_early_media=true,fname=$2,lname=$3,appt_timestamp=$4}sofia/gateway/flowroute/$1
reminder`

Call that script from shell using a Unix timestamp for the appointment
date/time, like this:
./dialout.sh 18005551212 brandon coale 1368077828

Then have a simple dialplan (assumes you've built one of the TTS engines):

<extension name="dial out reminder">
  <condition field="destination_number" expression="^reminder$">
    <action application="answer"/>
    <action application="sleep" data="1000"/> <!-- pause for a sec, let
media kick in -->
    <action application="playback" data="this_is_a_message_for.wav"/>
    <action application="speak" data="${fname} ${lname}"/>
    <action application="playback" data="you_have_an_appointment_on.wav"/>
    <action application="say" data="en short_date_time pronounced
${appt_timestamp}"/>
    <action application="playback"
data="please_dont_miss_or_we_charge_obnoxious_fee.wav"/>
    <action application="hangup"/>
  </condition>
</extension>


On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 5:21 PM, Brandon Coale <brandoncoale at sbcglobal.net>wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I am in the research phase for the following project and am researching
> what options are available.
>
> My health care organization is looking for a way to do appointment
> reminders.  We currently have staff members who spend part of each day
> manually calling patients to remind them of their upcoming appointments,
> and we would like to automate this process.
>
> Our electronic health record software would provide such information as
> the patient's name, phone number, and day and time of the appointment,
> and FreeSWITCH could take this information and place an automated call
> to the patient.  We would like the reminder call to use text-to-speech
> to personalize the call, such as "We have an appointment reminder for
> [first name].  The appointment is on [date] at [time].
>
> I am wondering if anyone has experience with using FreeSWITCH for this
> type of application, and would be willing to share any details of how
> you implemented it?  I am interested in any ideas, from very simple to
> feature-rich.  We would be doing a new installation of FreeSWITCH for
> this purpose, so we could use any version of FreeSWITCH or any operating
> system you would recommend.
>
> Thank you!
> Brandon
>
>
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-- 
Michael S Collins
Twitter: @mercutioviz
http://www.FreeSWITCH.org
http://www.ClueCon.com
http://www.OSTAG.org
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