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Healthcare Resources and Tools

Twilio.org COVID-19 Vaccine Distribution Grant Round and Support

To support global vaccine distribution and administration, Twilio.org is providing $10 million in grants, $1 million in product credits, and committing 1,000 volunteer hours to support organizations that are helping underserved communities get vaccinated. If you’re working on vaccine distribution for underserved communities, we encourage you to apply for support. Apply here.

Build a COVID-19 Vaccine Standby List

A new Quick Deploy app to quickly launch a COVID-19 vaccine standby list is now available for public health agencies. Deploy the template here.

Build a Call Overflow System with Twilio Studio and Serverless

Telephony systems for healthcare provider offices are overloaded with calls due to vaccine appointment scheduling. As …

Photo courtesy of Pixabay (CC BY 2.0)

Whether you are a seasoned investor, downloaded RobinHood when the r/wallstreetbets events overtook the news cycle, or are keen to play with a new API, you can never have too many methods of checking the latest stock prices. You will build a bot for WhatsApp that will message a user basic stock quote information when they send in a valid ticker symbol.

You’ll use the Finnhub.io Stock API to do so. They also have a Forex and Crypto API, so check those out if you want to add on to what you will build here.

Prerequisites

• A Twilio Account - sign up for a free one here and get $10 when you upgrade your account
• Java 8 or above (for simpler installation, check out SDKMAN! This tutorial uses version 11.0.10.hs-adpt.
• API Key for the Finnhub.io API -  Register for a free …

Photo via Canva One Design Use License Agreement

Right now telephony systems for healthcare provider offices are overloaded with calls due to vaccine appointment scheduling. As widespread rollout increases globally, it’s important for healthcare systems to anticipate this volume increase. In this article you will learn how to build a cloud-based interactive voice response (IVR) system with Twilio Studio and Twilio Serverless. This system will handle incoming calls so that no patient’s call will be lost; it will store the patient’s request in a database that can be used by a healthcare professional to review and follow up.

You might be wondering where exactly you would store the patient’s request. This will likely go in the patient’s Electronic Health Record (EHR). According to cms.gov, an EHR is an electronic version of a patient’s medical history, that is maintained by the provider over time, and may include all of …

If you’ve used the Twilio Programmable Messaging API, you may be wondering what all of the different SID values mean.

You also may have seen different names in a JSON response that share the same values similar to this (and wondered why there were duplicates):

This post will go over what the different Programmable Messaging SIDs mean, and how you can use them. It will also demonstrate how you can set up a Status Callback URL in a POST request to the Programmable Messaging API to see an instance where two different SIDs contain the same value.

Prerequisites

• A Twilio account - sign up for a free one here

What even is a SID?

SID stands for String Identifier. It’s a unique key that is used to identify specific resources. At Twilio, each SID has 34 digits and you can identify …

Photo from freestocks.org used under Creative Commons Zero

For #GiftofCode this year I wanted to build something useful for my family. One fun conversation topic that’s kept us close is what we are watching on Netflix and other streaming platforms.

While the in-app experiences of most major streaming apps give recommendations aplenty, making a recommendation bot that someone could text sounded like a fun thing to try.

I had a few requirements in mind for this one:

• Power the bot using Twilio Autopilot
• Ask the texter for the type of media they want to watch and which genre
• Use the Netflix “Viewing Activity” data to determine shows and movies my family has already watched
• Use a publicly available API in case other folks want to build their own

There are some useful streaming metadata APIs available. A robust paid option that I tried out was Reelgood. I ended up …

Build and Deploy with Liz Moy is a curiosity-driven podcast that explores the lives of people who create things with code. In this episode we dive into a conversation with a creative who makes things with code, hardware, soldering irons, and even, on occasion, faux fur.

Christine Sunu is a maker who designs and builds technology with emotive, human-centered interfaces. (She also happens to be IoT developer engagement manager at Twilio). We talked about Sourd.io, an IoT Sourdough Starter Monitor, which monitors your bread’s temperature, humidity, and rise, so you know how it’s growing and when it needs to be fed.

Her project was featured on The Verge and Mashable, uses Twilio Narrowband and can be easily attached to the top of a washable canning jar. We also talked about ways people can get started with their own IoT projects and you can get some more ideas from …

Build and Deploy with Liz Moy is a curiosity-driven podcast that explores the lives of people who create things with code. Some might describe themselves as creatives, programmers, musicians, artists, or even fashion designers. But the truth is that no matter what their title, they’re all developers.

Our first episode is with Nicole He, a creative technologist and game developer who made sms-bot.info, a resource that empowers anyone to build a SMS bot using Twilio and Google Sheets. We talked about the first game she ever built, the motivation behind building the tutorial, and possibilities of new features, like extending it for WhatsApp.

Subscribe and Listen on: APPLE PODCASTS | RSS | OVE …

On June 14, publisher Amistad Books launched an initiative to encourage people to purchase any two books by Black writers between June 13th – June 20th.

In addition, artists such as Noname have launched book clubs and dialogue to support Black voices in written works from anti-racist texts, to poetry, to science fiction and fantasy.

To help folks decide on something to read, I built a simple book recommendation bot using Programmable SMS with Python and Airtable to store the book data. The result is a guided conversation that allows the texter to choose a genre they want to read, and responds with a title of a book and a link to a Black-owned bookstore in the U.S. that has the book for sale, either in print,e-book, or audio book.

Try it by sending a text to (409) 404-0403. You can also see the Python code below and …

"Scandia 010" by How I See Life is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0

Airtable is like a cool big-budget superhero crossover between a spreadsheet and a database.

It’s easy to write to an Airtable from your Twilio app, so we’re going to take that idea and build off of it to make a SMS-driven survey app using Python and the Flask framework.

The survey app we are going to build will gather NPS, which stands for Net Promoter Score, a metric used to measure customer experience. However, you can customize the survey for purposes specific to your needs. Try it out by texting your favorite emoji to the number below.

We’ll go through this step-by-step, and we will do it all in a single file. If you would like to download the complete project you can find it in this GitHub repository: https://github.com/Eclairemoy/nps-survey

Building the Project

Prerequisites

To …