FAQ Bot — Accessible information through a chatbot

Germany's health platform needed a patient guide

gesundbund.de is Germany's national health information portal, backed by the Bundesministerium für Gesundheit (Federal Ministry of Health). As the platform expanded its coverage of the electronic patient record (ePA), a new challenge emerged: people were confused, and the static FAQ pages weren't keeping up.

The solution was a conversational chatbot — one that could answer common questions dynamically, meet accessibility standards, and feel like a helpful service rather than a bureaucratic wall of text.

Information that was hard to find and harder to trust

• Complexity. The electronic patient record (ePA) involves legal, medical and technical concepts that are difficult to communicate plainly to a general audience.
• Accessibility. The platform serves users with a wide range of digital literacy and accessibility needs.
• Scalability. The content landscape around the ePA was expanding rapidly; the system needed to grow without requiring a complete redesign each time.

Mapping the most-asked questions

The research phase focused on gathering the most commonly asked questions about the ePA, vaccination records and dental benefits documentation. These were structured into a logical progression to support a natural conversation flow — so users could start with a broad question and drill into specifics without feeling lost.

Benchmark analysis of comparable health chatbots revealed a recurring failure mode: interfaces that felt cold or clinical created distrust. The design needed to feel helpful, not automated.

Friendly, accessible, and on-brand

The visual style was designed to match the main gesundbund.de site while incorporating warmer, more approachable elements — including expressive eyes in the bot avatar — to make the interface feel more like a helpful guide than a search engine.

Accessibility compliance was a core requirement from the brief — the chatbot was designed and tested against BITV 2.0 (the German web accessibility standard), ensuring keyboard navigation, sufficient contrast, and screen reader compatibility throughout.

Launched — and built to grow

The chatbot launched successfully on gesundbund.de, delivering instant, accessible information about the ePA to a broad public audience. Its modular architecture was designed to support future topic expansion and content updates without requiring a UI overhaul.