Question 1

Can it handle different eye-exam types?

Accepted Answer

Yes. gema books from the appointment types you define — comprehensive exams, contact-lens fittings, pediatric visits, dispensing appointments — at their real durations, with the right optometrist, and respects the buffers you set between them.

Question 2

Which plan do I need, and what does it cost?

Accepted Answer

Two plans you can start today, priced per clinic location — never per practitioner. gema Booking is $149/mo: a booking widget for the website you already have, scheduling across your practitioners and services, AI chat inside the widget, the patient portal, self-serve cancelling and rescheduling 24/7, email confirmations and reminders, Ask gema for your staff, and 1,000 gema Credits a month. gema Front Desk is $299/mo: everything in Booking, plus gema answering every phone call 24/7 and handling SMS, email and web chat — booking, cancelling and rescheduling on all of them — with reminders by text, email or phone, a dedicated phone number, one activity log across every channel, escalation to your team, and 6,000 gema Credits a month, which cover about 200 minutes of AI calls or 200 AI conversations. gema Smart Phone — your own team answering your line inside gema, with gema assistance — is coming soon at $249/mo. Front Desk does not include it: Front Desk is gema answering the line, Smart Phone is your own people answering it, and having both is Smart Phone added to Front Desk for $99/mo. $0 setup, no per-practitioner fees, cancel anytime, and usage past your included credits is billed monthly. If the ringing phone is the problem, start at Front Desk. Running several locations? Talk to us.

Question 3

What is a gema Credit, and what happens if we go over?

Accepted Answer

A credit is 5 cents, and each plan includes a monthly pool of them. An AI phone call is 30 credits a started minute; an AI chat or text conversation is 30 credits for up to six AI replies, then 5 for each reply after that; an AI email reply is 15; an Ask gema question is 10; a text message reminder is 3, and any other text we send is 2. Every other message is 1 credit: an automatic email (confirmations, reminders, cancellations), an email your team writes, a text or email a patient sends you, and a patient portal message. The bookings patients make in the booking widget cost nothing. Front Desk’s 6,000 credits cover about 200 minutes of AI calls, or 200 AI conversations, or any mix. Go past your credits and nothing stops: the extra is 5 cents a credit ($1.50 an AI call minute), added to your next monthly invoice. There is nothing prepaid, no packs to buy, and nothing to top up mid-month.

Question 4

Does it handle vision insurance or contact-lens orders?

Accepted Answer

No. gema does not verify vision benefits, split exam versus materials coverage, submit direct billing, place contact-lens orders or check whether a prescription is still valid. It answers what patients ask about your practice — do you direct-bill, what does an exam cost, when am I due — from answers you give it, and routes the rest to your team. Orders and claims stay with your staff and your optical software.

Question 5

Will it work with optometry practice software?

Accepted Answer

gema runs your front desk and owns the booking calendar directly, so it works alongside whatever software you already use. If you keep a separate clinical record, our setup team will confirm whether we can sync bookings into it before you go live — and we are adding new integrations regularly.

Question 6

Can I hear it before I pay anything?

Accepted Answer

Two ways, both free. Press “Talk to gema” anywhere on this page and you are talking to the same voice your patients would hear — that is the product, not a video. Then ask for a demo and we build a working gema on your clinic: your real services, practitioners and hours, taken from your own website. You call it, book yourself in, and watch the appointment land in the calendar. Your real phone number is not touched until you decide to go live.

Question 7

What happens after I ask for a demo?

Accepted Answer

We build your demo — usually within a day — and email you a private link to it. You try it on your own clinic, we answer whatever it raises, and if it fits you start on either plan; going live is pointing your number at gema, or using the dedicated one Front Desk gives you, which takes minutes. If you tick the box on the form we will also place one automated call to your line after you close, and send you the recording, so you can hear exactly what your after-hours callers hear today.

Question 8

How do you handle PHIPA and PIPEDA?

Accepted Answer

PHIPA is Ontario’s health-privacy law and PIPEDA is the federal privacy law, and gema is built to both. Your clinic stays the health information custodian — you decide what is collected and who sees it. We act as your agent under PHIPA: we hold and move information only on your instructions, never for our own purposes, and every clinic’s records are isolated from every other clinic on the platform. The safeguard, breach-notification, access-control and audit undertakings we give you are set out in writing in our Terms of Service, so there is nothing separate to negotiate or sign.

Question 9

Where is patient data stored, and who can see it?

Accepted Answer

Your records are stored in Canada, encrypted in transit and at rest. Some processing — the phone network, application hosting, speech and language AI, email delivery — happens outside Canada as calls and messages are handled and as your team works in gema. Support access by our staff is role-limited, requires a stated reason, is time-limited and is session-recorded. Opening a patient record in our internal tools, revealing a masked phone number or email, and every export or deletion are written to an append-only log, and you can read that accounting back from your dashboard.

Question 10

Is patient data used to train AI?

Accepted Answer

We do not train AI models, and the AI providers that talk with your patients are contractually prohibited from training on your data. We hold those signed agreements on file. If there is ever a breach affecting your patients we notify you within 72 hours so you can meet your own PHIPA obligations, and we keep breach records for seven years.

You’re behind the phoropter.
The phone keeps ringing.

Built for optometry practices.

Every call answered, exam room or not

Patients who text get an answer

Patients book their own exam online

Exam types booked at the right length

Confirmations and reminders, sent for you

A patient portal instead of a phone call

Four channels. One AI answering all of them.

Voice Agent

Live today. No dev team required.

Set up your clinic

Give it your rules

Go live today

Your chart stays where it is. Your bookings go straight into it.

Talk to gema.

Priced per location. Built to grow.

gema vs. the alternatives

Someone has to answer the phone.

See gema running your clinic.

Common questions

You’re behind the phoropter.The phone keeps ringing.