How to set up knowledge base for sleep study results time…

You will need a Chatref account (new accounts get $50 free credit with no credit card required) and the content that describes your sleep study results process. Gather anything that explains the journey from the sleep study night through scoring, interpretation, report generation, and patient notification. This could be a PDF of your patient handout, a page on your clinic website, a memo for front-desk staff, or plain text notes. Also include your standard timelines: how many business days until preliminary results, when reports are sent, who contacts the patient, and by what method. If you have an FAQ document for patients, that works perfectly.

The bot you set up will handle routine timeline questions only. It should not offer clinical interpretation or replace a clinician. You will train it on your documents so that every answer is grounded in your own procedure. For a broader look at how Chatref helps sleep clinics with scheduling and before-visit questions, see the Sleep Clinics guide.

1. Add your timeline content to the knowledge base
Log into your Chatref account and go to the knowledge base area. Upload the files (PDFs, text files), paste in the timeline directly, or point to URLs from your clinic’s site that describe the results process. The system will read everything you provide and make it retrievable by the agent. For accuracy, separate distinct pieces: one source for the standard timeline, another for communication methods, and a third for what patients should do while they wait. That helps the bot pull from the right source when a patient asks a specific follow-up.

2. Create the sleep study results agent
Create a new AI agent from the dashboard. Name it something clear like “Sleep Study Results Timeline.” Under agent settings, you can set a greeting message such as “Ask me when to expect your sleep study results and what happens next.” If you want to match your clinic’s brand, you can adjust the widget’s primary color. There are no extra charges for branding or extra agents—every account includes unlimited bots and customization.

3. Ground the agent in your uploaded content
By default, the agent uses all the documents you have added to your knowledge base. In the agent’s settings, you can optionally refine its behavior further by writing a short instruction, for example: “Answer only with the timelines and steps described in the uploaded content. Do not provide medical advice or interpret results. If a patient asks for clinical information, kindly direct them to call the clinic.” This guardrail keeps the bot safe.

4. (Optional) Set up handoff to a human
If your team uses Chatref’s shared inbox, you can configure the agent to hand over any conversation that the bot cannot answer—or that a patient explicitly asks to escalate. The human agent will see the full chat history and can step in without repeating questions.

Use the live playground in your dashboard to test the agent with the kind of questions patients ask. Try variations:

• “How long until I hear back after my sleep study?”
• “When will I get my results, and how are they sent?”
• “I had my study last night—what happens today?”
• “Can you tell me what my results mean?”

The bot should return specific timelines from your own documents for the first three, and for the fourth it should politely decline to interpret results and offer to connect to a staff member. If you see any gaps—like a timeline mismatch across documents—update the source content and test again. The knowledge base is always editable, and changes take effect immediately.

Bot gives a vague or incorrect timeline. This usually means the source content is missing a specific step or has two different time estimates. Review your documents for conflicting statements (e.g., “results in 5–7 days” in one place and “within 3 days” in another). Update to one clear, accurate timeline and the agent will reflect it.

Bot offers medical advice despite your instructions. Revisit the agent instructions. Strengthen the guardrail by explicitly listing phrases to avoid, such as “diagnosis,” “interpretation,” or “likely cause.” Also remove any clinical language from the uploaded content that isn’t part of the administrative process. The agent can only say what your content contains.

Team needs visibility into conversations. If you haven’t activated the shared inbox, your front desk won’t see chats until you turn it on. Enable the inbox so your staff can monitor the bot’s replies and jump in when needed.

Patients ask in a language other than English. Chatref supports up to 11 languages. If you serve a multilingual community, add translated versions of your timeline documents to the knowledge base. The agent will then answer in whichever language the patient uses, drawing from the matching content.

Updates to your clinic’s process aren’t reflected. When you change your turnaround time or communication method, simply replace the old document in the knowledge base. You don’t need to recreate the agent. All future conversations will use the new timeline.

What causes sleep study results timeline bot problems for Sleep Clinics?

Most issues come from incomplete or conflicting information in the knowledge base. If the bot sees one document that says “results in 3 days” and another that says “5–7 days,” it may confuse the timeline. Also, lacking clear instructions to avoid clinical commentary can cause the bot to overstep. Without a handoff path, patients with urgent questions may feel stuck.

How do I improve sleep study results timeline bot for Sleep Clinics?

Start by reviewing your uploaded content for consistency and filling gaps: add your exact notification sequence, typical delays, and contact procedures. Write a short agent instruction that explicitly limits answers to administrative timelines and declines clinical questions. Enable the shared inbox so staff can take over conversations that need a person. Finally, watch the conversation history to spot misunderstandings and refine the content. Each adjustment makes the bot more reliable without any technical work.