LY Communications

The account resolves the issue of getting through on the phone, and offers other support for making appointments

LINE Corporation (“LINE”; Location: Shinjuku Ward, Tokyo; Representative Director, President, and Chief Executive Officer: Takeshi Idezawa) and its Fukuoka-based subsidiary, LINE Fukuoka Corporation (“LINE Fukuoka”; Location: Hakata Ward, Fukuoka; Representative Director, President, and Chief Executive Officer: Noritaka Ochiai) in association with Fukuoka Children’s Hospital are pleased to announce the start of verification testing today, June 10, on a dedicated LINE Official Account. This testing aims to reduce the time needed to make examination appointments and increase efficiency for staff.

Resolving the issue of busy lines and eliminating the hassle of making appointments over the phone
Fukuoka Children’s Hospital offers highly specialized treatment such as emergency pediatric care and perinatal care, and generally requires an appointment. As a result, the hospital’s appointments center receives about 15,000 requests annually just to change appointments. For parents, this makes it difficult to connect over the phone and time-consuming to confirm an appointment.

The LINE Group and Fukuoka Children’s Hospital have created a dedicated LINE Official Account to solve these issues. We will conduct verification testing on appointment changing and follow-up scheduling via LINE until March 31, 2021, and study the impact that offering different appointment-making methods has on convenience for families and efficiency for hospital staff. Based on the test results, we will consider expanding the feature to cover examinations that require a referral from a general healthcare facility, and launching it as a full-scale service.

Support for making appointments through the Fukuoka Children’s Hospital LINE Official Account

( 1 ) You can now request changes to your appointment or schedule a follow-up at your convenience on LINE 24 hours a day, regardless of hospital hours or how busy the appointments center is.
( 2 ) You only need to enter the patient information required to make an appointment (such as your medical examination number or contact information) once. After that, just select your desired appointment date and complete the process in 30 seconds.

Additionally, the account offers a “First-time users” (初めての方へ) page, which is a collection of information from the Fukuoka Children Hospital’s homepage for people who have not used their services before.

Features offered through the Fukuoka Children’s Hospital LINE Official Account
<Change your appointment or schedule follow-ups on LINE>
Select “Make a follow-up appointment” (再診予約) or “Change appointment” (予約変更) from the account’s top menu, then follow the steps to enter patient and contact information as well as your desired appointment date.

Within about three business days, the account will send you a message with your confirmed appointment date.

<Learn about the Children’s Hospital with the First-time Users page>
Tapping “First-time Users”(初めての方へ) will send you to a specialized page. You can scroll through the page, or use the menu at the top right to find the information you need.

• Information selection and account structure that utilize feedback from interviews with families
The First-time Users page was created in a collaboration with SEREAL Inc (“SEREAL”; Location: Chuo Ward; Representative Director: Masahiro Adachi), a design studio located in Fukuoka City’s startup hub, Fukuoka Growth Next.

Interviews were conducted with the families of previous patients in order to find out what parents wanted to know when initially researching the children’s hospital. Parents said they wanted to know as soon as possible what they needed to prepare for their appointment, if the hospital offered support for their child’s illness, and wondered if the hospital had a record of accomplishment.
Based on that feedback, we selected information from the hospital’s homepage and created an easy to understand page containing basic information. This includes the hospitalization flow and what parents need to bring to examinations, a breakdown of high-level care, past cases of serious illnesses treated, the number of operations the hospital has performed, and more.

The LINE Group will continue to leverage its cutting-edge technologies in areas such as AI and FinTech in order to make a richer, more convenient and future-oriented “Smart City.” In accordance with the Comprehensive Partnership Agreement between LINE Fukuoka and Fukuoka City, we will also work to improve various aspects of citizens’ daily lives, including healthcare, in the future.

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