AI phone assistant for physiotherapy: three routes to a booking

Integration decides this, not the voice

There are three routes, no fourth. Either the assistant writes the appointment into your practice software, or it keeps a calendar of its own beside it, or it leaves a callback note. DeskBot lists Albo, iPrax, Medifox, Noventi Ora, TheOrg, TTools and Optica Viva for the first route, while SpeakKI describes the second one openly: software-independent, booking into Google Calendar or Outlook.

The gap in price is smaller than the gap in effort. Monthly fees of 39 to 225 euros sit against a treatment that the official German price list has paid at 29.63 euros for one physiotherapy session since 1 January 2026. Pick the wrong route and you pay in reception hours, not in fees.

Three routes, three different jobs at the front desk

This table replaces any sales call. On the left is what a vendor promises, on the right what still happens by hand. All figures are vendor list prices, read on 23 September 2026:

• Route 1, writes into the practice software: DeskBot, 39 euros base plus 19 euros per full-time therapist, or 69 plus 39 euros on the larger plan. Reception only checks the odd case. What stays open is which interface does the writing, because the page does not say.
• Route 2, its own calendar alongside: SpeakKI, 39 euros with 300 minutes, 89 euros with 800, 249 euros with 2,500. Bookings sit in Google or Outlook, so somebody copies them across.
• Route 3, callback note plus handover: Vokaro books into the open Cal.com system by default, the practice copies it over, 99 euros a month plus a 290 euro setup fee. A custom link to THEORG is offered as billable work.
• A calendar that belongs only to the AI is a sticky note with an internet connection.

What THEORG documents, and what it does not

The most common practice software has no open appointment interface. SOVDWAER describes THEDEX as a route through which patient master data is taken over from another system in a standardised way, naming training-device makers such as Dr. Wolff, proxomed, ERGO-FIT, milon Care as partners. Appointments are absent from that list. A vendor who writes into THEORG anyway uses some route, so ask them to name it.

In other programs, booking bypasses the phone entirely. MEDIFOX DAN advertises MD Therapie by saying patients reserve online, so the appointment lands straight in the calendar. A practice already paying for that only needs an assistant for callers who will not book online, a much smaller job than the one vendors advertise.

The hard part is the series, not the single slot

A German prescription is a chain of appointments with an expiry date. The national therapy guideline requires that treatment starts within 28 calendar days of the prescription, or within 14 calendar days when urgency is marked on it, otherwise the prescription lapses. The form also states how many sessions were prescribed at what frequency.

That drives the most important part of a call script. The assistant has to capture four things: issue date, urgency marker, number of sessions, preferred weekdays. Book a single slot instead, and you create work rather than removing it, because reception still enters the remaining five by hand. One physiotherapy session runs 15 to 25 minutes under the price list, so a series blocks the same slot for weeks.

What the three routes cost per month

Count in treatments, not in euros. The basis is the official 29.63 euros per physiotherapy session, 35.59 euros per manual therapy session. The figures below were calculated with python3 from vendor list prices, for a practice with four full-time therapists:

• DeskBot Smart AB: 39 plus four times 19 euros is 115 euros a month, worth 3.9 sessions.
• DeskBot Praxisassistent: 69 plus four times 39 euros is 225 euros, worth 7.6 sessions.
• SpeakKI Professional: 89 euros, worth 3.0 sessions. At 800 included minutes and an assumed 2.5 minutes per call, that covers 320 calls a month, a good 15 on each of 21 working days, at 0.28 euros per call.
• Vokaro Telefon in year one: 99 euros times twelve plus the 290 euro setup fee, which averages 123.17 euros a month, worth 4.2 sessions.
• Copying effort on routes 2 and 3, on our own assumption of 40 seconds per appointment: 320 calls means 3.6 hours of retyping a month. That line item appears on no pricing page.

Health details do not belong in the call transcript

The assistant never asks for a diagnosis. Health data falls under Article 9 of the GDPR, whose first paragraph bans such processing as a rule, while a name, a callback number, a prescription date and a preferred time are all a booking needs. Whatever a caller volunteers stays out of the transcript, at most as a keyword in the callback note.

Settle three points before the first call goes live: the processing agreement, the server location, the deletion period for recordings. SpeakKI states German data centres, Vokaro states Hetzner in Nuremberg, both as vendor claims. One duty applies on top: Article 50 of the EU AI Act has required since 2 August 2026 that callers learn at the first interaction that they are speaking to an AI system. Our piece on removing customer data before a prompt and its free tool show how to strip personal details first.

What I would do in your place

Yes to route 1, if your program appears on the vendor's list and they name the interface. Before signing, have them book a series of six appointments during the trial and look at the plan yourself. If it holds, you save the 3.6 hours of retyping, and the 26 euro gap between SpeakKI Professional and DeskBot Smart AB is barely one treatment a month.

No to routes 2 and 3 if your practice software already offers online booking. Point callers there by recorded message and pay for one calendar, not two. No as well for a two-therapist practice with regular patients: DeskBot Smart AB at 77 euros a month is only 2.6 treatments, but voicemail plus a midday callback round costs nothing. Our piece on AI cost per case shows how to price such running costs per case rather than per month.

Common questions

• What does an assistant like this sound like? Our free AI phone demo runs in the browser without signing up.
• May it triage patients in pain? No. It takes the request, and on keywords such as severe pain it transfers or alerts the team at once; the practice decides who gets a short-notice slot.
• What about cancellations? Check whether the assistant may cancel and offer the freed slot to the waiting list. That is where the money is, not in new bookings.
• Does this pay off for a private practice? Appointment values are higher there, so the sum turns positive sooner, while the integration question stays the same. Our piece on the AI phone assistant in a car workshop works through comparable figures.

The next step

Before the trial month, send the vendor one question: through which interface does your assistant enter a series of six appointments into our practice software, and what happens when a patient moves the second one? No concrete answer means route 2 or 3, so budget the 3.6 hours of retyping. If you would rather have the setup and the handover into your practice software done with you, the route runs through our services.