Preventive care includes things like cancer screening, vaccinations, and health checkups. These services help find diseases early and manage them better. However, Hispanic and other non-English-speaking groups often face challenges. They may not speak English well, have different cultural ideas, low health knowledge, fear, or do not know about the services. Because of this, they get screened less often, get diagnosed later, and have worse health overall. For example, colorectal cancer screening happens less for Hispanic people—about 53.4% compared to 70.4% for non-Hispanic white people.
Patients who don’t speak English well also have trouble using healthcare services. Communication problems make it hard to make appointments, follow medical instructions, and get follow-up care. This shows a need for better ways to talk that meet different language and cultural needs.
Some new studies show that AI that speaks many languages can help with these problems. “Ana” is a bilingual AI voice agent made by Hippocratic AI. She called patients in Pennsylvania and Maryland who were due for colorectal cancer screening. Ana gave education, answered questions, and helped schedule tests or send out stool test kits in the patient’s preferred language.
The results were clear. Spanish-speaking patients had much better engagement than English speakers. Of 1,878 patients, 517 spoke Spanish, and 1,361 spoke English. Spanish speakers opted into the stool test 18.2% of the time, more than double the 7.1% for English speakers. Also, Ana connected to 88.8% of Spanish speakers by phone but only 53.3% of English speakers. The calls lasted longer with Spanish speakers, about 6 minutes compared to 4 minutes for English speakers. Longer calls mean better conversations.
This shows that when patients get healthcare information in their own language and culture, they join in more. A statistical analysis also proved that choosing Spanish as the preferred language predicts a two times higher chance of opting into the test. This proves AI can help close healthcare gaps instead of making them worse.
Medical practice managers and IT teams can learn from these findings. They show how AI can fit into their daily work to reach more patients, especially those from different language groups. AI that speaks a patient’s language can help more people get preventive care and reduce the work on staff.
Community health centers, Medicaid providers, and health systems that serve many Hispanic patients can use multilingual AI outreach. The study took place in Pennsylvania and Maryland, states with many Hispanic residents, showing that local AI outreach in the right language works better.
Spanish-speaking patients in the study were usually younger (average age 57 versus 61 for English speakers) and had more women (49.1% versus 38.4%). This information can help practices target outreach better by mixing AI tools and human help to focus on groups that need it most.
AI technology can also improve healthcare office work. AI voice agents automate many phone tasks that used to take much time. These tasks include making appointments, calling patients for follow-ups, checking insurance, answering billing questions, and arranging transport.
Simbo AI is a company that uses AI voice for phone automation while following privacy rules like HIPAA. Their system reduces the work for health workers and office staff, so they can do more complex patient care tasks that need a person’s judgment.
Besides saving time, AI voice agents connect with patient records to make conversations more personal and helpful. They can check patient history, give reminders, and alert doctors if something serious comes up. This makes AI communication smart and useful.
For patients who don’t speak English, AI conversations happen in their language while keeping privacy protected by health laws like HIPAA. This helps keep patient information safe and confidential.
AI voice agents can also help doctors with patient care. They check on patients with chronic illnesses like diabetes or high blood pressure by calling regularly to ask about symptoms or medicine side effects.
The AI can also sort patients by symptoms and send those who need urgent help to the right place quickly. This helps patients get care faster and avoids emergencies. These AI roles help doctors reach more patients, especially where there are few healthcare workers.
Studies show AI gives correct advice more than 99% of the time in over 300,000 test calls, without serious harm. But it is important to keep studying and checking AI systems as they grow.
Better Patient Engagement: AI outreach raises screening rates among underserved groups. For example, Spanish speakers doubled their opt-in for stool tests in one study.
More Efficient Operations: Automating phone calls cuts staff workload, shortens wait times, and lets staff focus on complex cases.
Follow Rules: Systems like Simbo AI meet HIPAA rules to keep data safe.
Can Grow Easily: AI can be changed to many languages and cultures, so it works for many different places.
Works with Patient Records: Linking AI with electronic health records supports personal care and better decisions.
Language is a big barrier to getting preventive care. About 25 million people in the U.S. speak Spanish at home. AI agents that talk naturally and kindly in Spanish and English, like Ana from Hippocratic AI, show how language-matched outreach can work.
Ana had culturally sensitive talks with patients, listened to their worries, and explained colorectal cancer screening clearly. This got past problems like low health understanding and mistrust. Using the patient’s language helped more people say yes to screening and led to longer talks. This shows patients listened and felt comfortable.
Even though the results are good, the study has limits. It only looked at one health system in Pennsylvania and Maryland. The time was short, and it did not check if patients finished the screenings later. This means the results may not apply everywhere.
More research is needed to see if patients keep up with colorectal cancer screening and if AI outreach improves health in the long run. Trying this AI in other languages and health systems is important to learn more.
Healthcare groups also need to think about the costs of AI, training workers, fitting it into current systems, and keeping up with rules and safety when using AI tools like Simbo AI or Hippocratic AI.
Medical practice managers, owners, and IT staff in the U.S. should take note of the benefits shown by multilingual AI outreach. It helps reduce gaps and increase preventive care, especially for people with limited English.
Using language-concordant AI fixes communication problems and makes office work easier by automating simple tasks. For places with many languages, such as Pennsylvania, Maryland, and California, using AI fits with goals to improve fairness, make patient outcomes better, and use resources well.
As healthcare moves toward value-based care, tools that reach patients who often miss out and reduce care gaps will become key to good and lasting medical practices.
The primary objective was to evaluate the effectiveness of a multilingual AI care agent in engaging Spanish-speaking patients for colorectal cancer screening compared to English-speaking patients.
The study included 1878 patients eligible for colorectal cancer screening; 517 were Spanish-speaking and 1361 were English-speaking patients without active web-based health profiles.
The AI agent made personalized telephone calls in the patient’s preferred language, provided education about colorectal cancer screening, and facilitated fecal immunochemical test (FIT) kit requests.
The primary outcome was the fecal immunochemical test (FIT) opt-in rate to gauge patient engagement with colorectal cancer screening.
Spanish-speaking patients had significantly higher engagement: FIT opt-in rates were 18.2% versus 7.1%, connect rates were 69.6% versus 53.0%, and call durations averaged 6.05 minutes versus 4.03 minutes for English speakers.
Yes, Spanish language preference was an independent predictor of FIT test opt-in with an adjusted odds ratio of 2.012, meaning Spanish speakers were twice as likely to opt-in after controlling for demographic factors and call duration.
Spanish-speaking patients were younger (mean age 57 vs 61 years) and more likely to be female (49.1% vs 38.4%) compared to English-speaking patients.
The findings suggest that language-concordant AI outreach can reduce longstanding disparities in preventive care access by significantly increasing engagement among non-English-speaking populations.
Limitations included being conducted in a single healthcare system, a short study duration, and the absence of follow-up data on whether patients completed screenings after opting in.
Future research should focus on assessing long-term adherence to screenings and determine whether increased engagement with AI outreach translates into improved clinical outcomes for patients.
Simbo is using AI agents to automate all phone related workflows. Connect now to know more.
Schedule AI Agents Demo Now© Since 2019, Simbo AI.
