Ambient AI company Nabla has launched its clinical note-taking solution in 31 new languages including four of the top five international languages spoken in the U.S.—Mandarin, Russian, Portuguese and Vietnamese.
The languages add to its existing multilingual offerings of Spanish, French and English, which it launched last year.
According to a press release by Nabla, 66 million people in the U.S. do not speak English as their primary language; medical errors that are a result of language barriers cost the U.S. health system an estimated $60 billion to $80 billion annually.
Nabla is among a few ambient AI companies to offer multiple languages, according to customers who chose Nabla because of its language repertoire. Adding more language options to the ambient assistant has long been part of Nabla’s goals to be able to assist more physicians and patients.
Providers can now select the patient’s preferred language for the encounter before starting the ambient note-taking assistant. Patients receive a summary of the interaction and follow up instructions in the language of their choice.
Moreover, the transcript of the visit will be available in the language of choice, while the note that is stored in the electronic health record will be generated in English, per U.S. compliance requirements.
Nabla rolled out a beta version of the 31 languages to physicians in April to test for accuracy and fine tune the model. User feedback has been an important part of the development process, Nabla executives said.
Delphine Groll, co-founder and chief operating officer of Nabla, said that customers were requesting that Nabla be available in other languages. There were many requests for Mandarin from potential customers on the West Coast.
So far, 6% of Nabla users are using the solution in a language other than English. In Florida, 14% of users are using the Spanish option on Nabla, Groll said.
Groll said she and her co-founders built Nabla to improve physician and patient communication, enhance trust and empathy and improve the patient experience. Offering the solution in multiple languages helps facilitate Nabla’s goals. Groll said it’s important to get the translations right to build trust with users.
Plus, doing the interaction in a patient’s first language will likely increase adherence to treatment.
“As a global company, we take health equity very seriously,” Groll said. “From the beginning of the company … caring for health accessibility is what we want[ed] to strike for, and so … supporting more international languages was part of the roadmap.”
Nabla now supports the following languages: Egyptian Arabic, Lebanese Arabic, Moroccan Arabic, Saudi Arabian Arabic, Armenian, Bengali, Cantonese, Croatian, Filipino, German, Greek, Gujarati, Hebrew, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Khmer, Korean, Mandarin, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Punjabi, Russian, Serbian, Spanish, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Urdu and Vietnamese.