When Are Chat Notifications Sent?

SigmaMD is designed to keep both clinicians and patients informed without sending too many alerts. Here’s how our chat notification system works:

New Chat Thread Notifications

• Whenever a clinician starts a new chat conversation, the patient is notified immediately.
• The same applies in reverse: if a patient starts a new chat, the clinician is notified.

Ongoing Conversations: Smart Notification Timing

To avoid notification fatigue, SigmaMD limits how often it notifies you about an ongoing conversation.

Within an existing chat, you are notified only if:

• The patient sends a message
  AND
• It has been more than 15 minutes since SigmaMD last sent you a notification for that chat
  AND
• You do not currently have that chat open.

The 15-minute window is counted separately for each chat and each person, and it starts from the last notification we sent you — not from the last time you read or replied. Opening a chat or replying to it does not restart the window. So if a patient answers you within 15 minutes of the last notification you received for that chat, no new notification is sent.

The message itself is always delivered either way, and the conversation stays in your Messaging list.

Notifications to patients follow the same 15-minute rule, measured from the last notification that patient received for that chat.

Important Note

If a clinician or patient sends multiple messages back-to-back after that 15-minute gap, only one notification is sent to the other person—so you're not flooded with alerts for every message.