Every patient already has it
No download, no onboarding, no explaining. For reach and familiarity nothing else in Singapore comes close.
Comparison
WhatsApp Business is free.
Here is what it costs you.
Written for clinic owners in Singapore who are being asked to pay for something they currently get for nothing. It includes the places where WhatsApp is the better choice, because you will find them out anyway.
To WhatsApp ⌄
Ekko
WhatsApp ✓
Both
⚠ 24-hour window expired. Send a template.
Select template
The window is Meta’s, and applies to messages Ekko sends over WhatsApp. Your WhatsApp Business app keeps working alongside Ekko, so anything you send from the app today you can still send from it, free. Ekko adds automatic, scheduled reconfirmations, which use Meta’s paid templates. The Ekko channel has no window at all.
Starting honestly
Where WhatsApp Business is the better choice
It costs nothing and it's already running
No procurement, no subscription, no implementation. That is a real advantage and it deserves to be said plainly.
A single clinician may need nothing more
If you answer every message yourself and employ nobody who replies for you, the gaps below may never affect you.
The calculation changes once staff reply on your behalf, or you add a second location. From that point you are accountable for conversations you cannot see.
Side by side
Sixteen things a practice owner eventually needs. Judge the list before you judge the columns.
| WhatsApp Business appThe free app, as most clinics run it today | EkkoBuilt for clinical communication | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | Free. No per-message charges. | S$99/month for one clinician; S$179/month per clinic location.Connecting your number to Meta’s Business Platform also brings Meta’s own template-message charges, billed to your clinic’s Meta account. See the row below. |
| What patients have to change | Nothing | Nothing. They keep messaging your existing number through Coexistence; the Ekko app is optional |
| Who replied, and when | Not recorded. Whoever had the phone or laptop open | Recorded against the patient, the staff member and the time — including replies sent from the WhatsApp app on a staff phone |
| Who owns the patient | Nobody. A conversation belongs to whoever picks it up | Each patient is assigned to a named doctor, and the ones with nobody are flagged UNASSIGNED |
| What the patient sees | Messages come from “the clinic”. The patient cannot tell the doctor from the front desk | The name and role of whoever wrote to them |
| An enquiry arrives at 7pm | An away message can say you are closed. It cannot ask what the patient needs, and nothing is waiting in a queue in the morning | An instant reply with the emergency instruction to call 995 or attend A&E, then three options — clinical question, appointment, other. The answer routes the enquiry, and it is an owned item in the queue before anyone opens a laptop |
| Access control | Whoever holds the device holds the inbox | Separate owner, doctor and staff roles, with routing between them |
| A staff member resigns | If they worked from their own handset, the conversation history goes with them. On a clinic-owned phone it stays — along with the phone | History stays with the clinic. Their access ends with their employment |
| View across locations | One inbox per number. Four sites means four inboxes | A dashboard per location and one consolidated view for the owner |
| Booking an appointment | The patient asks, someone reads it, checks the diary and types it into the EMR by hand — during office hours | The patient taps a link in the WhatsApp thread, picks from your real availability, and the appointment is written into your EMR. Works at 10pm with nobody awake. Requires an EMR integration — Plato live today, more in progress |
| Messaging after 24 hours | No limit on the free app. You can message a patient whenever you like, from the handset. | Be aware of this one. Messages Ekko sends over WhatsApp go through Meta’s Business Platform, so outside the 24-hour window Ekko can only send an approved template, which Meta charges for. That is also what lets Ekko do something the app cannot: send reconfirmations automatically, on a schedule. You choose. Coexistence keeps your WhatsApp Business app working in parallel and fully under your control, so anything you send by hand from the app today stays free — and still lands in Ekko, tagged. Messages in the Ekko channel have no window and no per-message charge. |
| Response-time reporting | None | Per-staff response report, measured inside your clinic's operating hours |
| Link to the patient record | Copy and paste into the EMR by hand | EMR integration — Plato live today, more in progress. Register the patient once and their Ekko account is created automatically |
| Confidential documents | Sent into the chat and stored in the phone's gallery | Sent only through Ekko, unlocked with a 6-digit PIN the patient sets. Never over WhatsApp |
| Medication reminders | A message someone has to remember to send | Structured reminders with dose, timing, frequency and a stop date — scheduled once |
| Account and configuration record | None | An audit log of account, role and location changes, searchable by user, role and date; conversations can be downloaded |
Describes WhatsApp Business as generally available to clinics in Singapore in 2026, and Ekko as at October 2026. Response-time figures are indicative.
Four ordinary Tuesdays
The difference shows up on the bad days
Your senior nurse resigns on Friday
On WhatsApp
Two years of patient conversations are on her handset. You ask for the phone, or you accept the loss.
In Ekko
You revoke her access. The record stays with the practice and the next person picks up mid-conversation.
A patient says nobody ever replied
On WhatsApp
You scroll four inboxes and hope. Nobody can tell you who was meant to answer.
In Ekko
You open the thread and see the named staff member on every reply, and the doctor the patient was assigned to.
A patient messages at 9.40pm
On WhatsApp
It's read by whoever happens to look, or at 9am tomorrow. The patient has had two grey ticks and no idea whether anyone is coming.
In Ekko
They get an instant reply, the emergency instruction if they need it, and three options to say what this is about. By 9am it is already in the queue, routed, with a named owner and the clock on screen.
You need to send a scan result
On WhatsApp
It lands in the chat and in the phone's photo gallery, visible to anyone who picks the phone up.
In Ekko
It goes as a protected attachment the patient unlocks with their own PIN, and never travels over WhatsApp at all.
Singapore · Health Information Act
It never mentions WhatsApp. It asks for seven things WhatsApp cannot show
The requirements are channel-agnostic — they describe what a clinic must be able to demonstrate about any system holding patient information. WhatsApp fails several of them by construction, not by name. Your own deadline depends on your licence: 1 September 2027 for GPs, 1 September 2028 for specialists, 1 March 2030 for dental. MOH’s route is a direction to rectify, not a fine out of nowhere — which only matters if you could comply with one. The obligation belongs to the clinic. Whatever you are using then has to be able to evidence it.
Summary of publicly reported provisions, for general information. Not legal advice.
What clinic owners say back to us
“Our patients will never download another app.”
Most never will, and they don't need to — everyday messaging stays on your WhatsApp number. But Ekko isn't your clinic's app. A patient who installs it holds every doctor they see in the same place and adds the next one by scanning a code, so the second clinic costs them nothing. The ones who do install it are the ones receiving documents and results, which is exactly where you want them.
“We're too small for this.”
You might be, and we'll say so. If you answer every message personally and nobody replies on your behalf, WhatsApp may be the right tool for you today. The moment a staff member speaks to a patient in your name, you need a record of what was said.
“We'll deal with compliance closer to the time.”
Moving years of patient conversation into a structured system, training staff and connecting your EMR is a migration. Clinics that start in the last quarter before the deadline do it badly and expensively.
“My staff are used to WhatsApp. Retraining is the real cost.”
They keep the same number and the same conversations — a reply sent from the WhatsApp app on their phone still lands in Ekko with their name on it. What changes is that they get a queue instead of a scroll, quick replies instead of retyping, and AI-drafted responses they edit rather than compose.
“Can we run both while we decide?”
That is the normal way in. Coexistence means both run on one number for as long as you want, and the 30-day trial exists so you can compare them on your own patients.
One patient, every doctor
E
Ekko Test Clinic
◉ Siglap
A
Alps Clinic
◉ Mount Elizabeth
S
Sarah Tan Staff
Still think WhatsApp is enough? Bring it to the demo.
Twenty minutes with one location's inbox. We'll show you the last month of it as Ekko would have handled it, and you can decide whether the difference is worthS$179 a month.