Aftercare instructions on WhatsApp, in Urdu and English

Six dental templates come with the app, each in English and Urdu: Instructions for crooked teeth, Instructions for dental filling, Instructions for dentures, Instructions for teeth cleaning, Instructions for tooth extraction, and Root cleaning instructions.

In Settings, Instructions Settings, you can read them, change them, or add your own with New Preset. The editor has headings, bold and italic, lists, alignment and colours, and takes Urdu as easily as English. A GP might add advice after a nebuliser or for diabetic foot care; a physiotherapist, home exercises.

Open the patient's file and press Send Instructions. Tick one or more, for example the extraction instructions and the root canal ones for a patient who had both, and press Send. WhatsApp opens with the patient's number and a message listing each instruction with its link, signed with your name, speciality, clinic, address and phone.

You check the message and press send in WhatsApp yourself. It goes from your own WhatsApp, so patients see it from the clinic they know.

The link opens a page with your name, clinic, speciality and address at the top, and a phone number they can tap to call. Below are the instructions, with Urdu shown in a proper Nastaliq font, the way Urdu is read in books and newspapers.

The round button at the bottom reads the instructions aloud with the phone's own voice: Urdu text in an Urdu voice where the phone has one (or the closest voice it has), English text in English. For an elderly patient or one who doesn't read easily, that matters more than any formatting. The link doesn't expire, so the patient can open it again a week later.

Each instruction has one link for your clinic, the same for every patient who receives it. So keep instructions general and put anything personal, like a medicine dose, in the prescription instead. How prescriptions work.

Sending needs an internet connection, and it goes by WhatsApp only, not SMS. The app doesn't keep a log of which patient got which instructions, so if you want a record, note it in the visit.