93% of patient enquiries automated at the Philippines' largest healthcare network

Services, doctors, and diagnostics

The majority of patient enquiries fall into three categories: questions about services offered, finding a new doctor, and checking diagnostic or laboratory results. Together, these account for more than 90% of all informational queries.

Before Henry, these questions were handled by the contact centre or individual clinic staff – a setup that created bottlenecks during peak hours and left patients without support outside working hours.

Henry now answers these questions instantly, 24/7, in Tagalog, Cebuano, and English – both in text and through voice messaging, so patients can speak their query rather than type it.

Proto integrated Henry with Healthway's medical directory system – a centralised database of doctors, their specialisations, clinic schedules, and service availability. Rather than relying on manually maintained content, Henry now queries this live data source directly, giving patients up-to-date information on which doctor is available at which location, and what services each facility offers.

Appointment booking without the wait

Appointment requests are one of the most operationally significant interactions Healthway receives – and among the areas where delays most directly affect patient experience.

Henry handles these through a semi-automated booking flow. The agent collects and categorizes patient's details, preferred schedule, and relevant clinical information, then forwards the request to the Healthway team for confirmation. Both the patient and the liveagent receive an email at each stage, keeping everyone informed without requiring a callback queue.

Symptom checking before the visit

One of Henry's more distinctive capabilities is conversational symptom checking – allowing patients to describe symptoms and receive guidance on the appropriate service or specialist before booking. It does not recommend medication, prescribe treatment, or draw any clinical conclusions. Its purpose is to help patients identify the most appropriate point of care – the right specialist or service for their situation – before their visit. All clinical assessment and decision-making remains with Healthway's medical staff.

The symptom content is trained on regional anonymized health data and patient intents, and Healthway's patient experience team maintains a regular cadence to review and update it as clinical guidance evolves.

HMO and billing enquiries

For many patients in the Philippines, understanding HMO (health maintenance organisation) coverage is a necessary first step before any clinic visit. HMOs are private health plans that pre-arrange access to a network of doctors and facilities – patients need to confirm which services are covered, how claims are processed, and whether their plan is accepted at a specific location before they book.

Handling such requests them automatically reduces the burden on the live chat team and contact centre for an area that is high in volume but largely predictable in structure.

Escalation to the contact centre – no gap in the handover

Henry operates as the first point of contact across Healthway's digital channels. When a query cannot be resolved automatically – or requires human judgement – the conversation is escalated to GICF's contact centre agents through Proto's unified inbox. When a live agent takes over a chats, they can see the full context:

• full conversation history between the patient and AI agent
• short AI summary of the conversation with patient's sentiment and emotion evaluation
• alll the patients details and personal details - from the current or previous chats
• for repeated patients - full history of previous chats and tickets

From pilot to network-wide adoption

The deployment began as a proof of concept at Healthway's headquarters, testing the effectiveness of conversational AI for symptom checking and multilingual support. Strong early results prompted a network-wide rollout, with Henry now active across more than ten locations spanning Metro Manila, CALABARZON, and the Visayas.

The shift in how conversations are handled tells the story of adoption.

When Henry first launched, AI handled 58% of chats – already a strong starting point. Three months later, that figure had reached 93%, with live agent involvement down to just 7% of conversations. That pace of shift – from majority AI to near-total AI in a single quarter – reflects both the quality of the deployment and the confidence Healthway's patients and team have placed in the system.

The next phase of the partnership extends Henry's reach to Healthway's hospital business units under an AI agent switch model: each business unit will have its own AI agent, resulting in a network of specialised agents unified under a single patient experience layer.