English live captions and productivity tool for doctor appointments

Approximately 11 million people in the United Kingdom have some degree of hearing loss according to RNID, and in the United States 48 million adults have some degree of hearing difficulty. In both countries, research consistently shows that deaf and hard of hearing people avoid medical appointments at higher rates than hearing adults — not because they have fewer health needs, but because the appointment itself is inaccessible. A study published in PMC (2023) found that 57% of deaf and hard of hearing adults deliberately avoided visiting a doctor even when they had symptoms, and that 93% who disclosed their hearing loss to a healthcare provider reported that no accommodation was made as a result.

In the UK, NHS Trusts are legally required to make reasonable adjustments for disabled patients under the Equality Act 2010, but there is no mandated minimum standard for communication support in clinical settings. Signed language interpreters are requested on a case-by-case basis and are frequently unavailable at short notice. RNID surveys consistently find that many deaf people experience healthcare appointments where the clinician makes no adjustment after being told about hearing loss — continuing to speak at the same pace, continuing to wear a mask, and not facing the patient when speaking.

The consequences are concrete. Poor patient–clinician communication is associated with medication errors, misdiagnosis, lower treatment adherence, and reduced willingness to seek follow-up care. For deaf and hard of hearing patients in English-speaking healthcare systems, this gap is structural and persistent. Captio AI captions the doctor's speech in real time — across accents, clinical registers, and masked consultations — so the GP appointment, the specialist referral, and the pharmacy conversation are no longer settings a deaf patient has to navigate alone.