Kannada live captions and productivity tool for doctor appointments
For deaf and hard of hearing people.
coming soon
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Everything you need to follow Kannada doctor appointments
Four tools built for deaf and hard of hearing Kannada speakers.
Follow what the doctor says in real time
- Captions appear word by word as they speak
- Handles medical terminology, drug names, and clinical language
- Place the phone on the desk — no setup needed
- Works in any consultation room, clinic, or hospital setting
When the doctor speaks another language
- Captions and translates in real time
- Follow your diagnosis in the language you understand best
- 60+ languages, no manual switching
- For foreign specialists, travel, or immigration settings
A full record of the consultation
- Record the appointment and upload it for a complete transcript
- Review instructions, drug names, and follow-up steps at home
- Share with a family member or carer if needed
- Works on any consultation recording
Key instructions extracted automatically
- Diagnosis, medication, and follow-up steps pulled from any transcript
- Organised into clear sections
- Nothing important missed or forgotten
- Works on any saved appointment recording
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Download on theApp StoreEvery situation covered
Designed for the real moments that matter — not just quiet controlled environments.
GP and primary care visits at a government hospital or private clinic in Bengaluru, Mysuru, or Hubli, where the doctor covers a lot of ground very fast and often speaks while writing.
Specialist consultations at NIMHANS, Victoria Hospital, or private hospital chains, where clinical vocabulary mixes Shuddha Kannada with English and is dense with terminology.
Pharmacy consultations at a medical shop or government dispensary, where the pharmacist explains dosage, interactions, and return-visit instructions verbally.
Dental appointments where the dentist explains the procedure and gives aftercare instructions quickly between procedures.
Mental health consultations at NIMHANS or a private psychiatrist's practice, where the precise exchange of question and response carries direct clinical weight.
Emergency room visits at a government district hospital or private A&E, where staff speak fast in mixed Kannada and English and clinical instructions are urgent.
Most accurate and fastest models
word accuracy
independent benchmark, 2025
real-time captions
first word appears as you speak
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Built for the conversations where every word matters
Captions as the doctor speaks
Words appear on screen while the doctor is still talking. You read the diagnosis, drug name, or follow-up instruction at the same moment it is said — not after they have moved on.
Medical terminology handled accurately
Drug names, procedure names, clinical terms. Captio AI handles the vocabulary of a real consultation — not just everyday speech.
Review the appointment after
Record the consultation and upload it to Audio Transcription. Get a full written record of everything said — instructions, dosages, referrals — to review at home and share with a carer if needed.
Works in any clinical setting
Consultation rooms, hospital wards, A&E, dental chairs, pharmacy counters. Place the phone near the speaker and Captio AI captions whoever is talking.
Any language
For foreign-language doctors, specialists abroad, or appointments through an interpreter. Live Translator captions and translates in real time so you follow your diagnosis in the language you understand best.
100% private
Medical conversations are among the most sensitive there are. Captio AI processes audio in real time and discards it immediately. Nothing is recorded, stored, or shared.
Why Kannada is hard to understand
Four-way stop contrasts
- Kannada's voiced, voiceless, and aspirated stops look identical on lips
- Kannada has a four-way phonemic distinction in stop consonants — voiceless, voiced, voiceless aspirated, and voiced aspirated — including an extensive retroflex series. The pairs p/ph/b/bh and the retroflex ṭ/ṭh/ḍ/ḍh are nearly identical on the lips but completely different sounds. Clinical words for body parts, conditions, and drug names use these distinctions — a deaf patient lip-reading cannot recover which stop was used, changing the word entirely.
Shuddha vs Hasa Kannada
- Clinical Kannada is a different register from everyday speech
- Kannada has a large formal-colloquial gap — Shuddha (pure, Sanskrit-influenced) Kannada used in formal and clinical settings vs Hasa (colloquial, everyday) Kannada. Doctors in Karnataka hospitals use Shuddha Kannada for clinical vocabulary — terms for diseases, procedures, and anatomy that a deaf patient familiar with everyday Hasa Kannada may not recognise at all.
Dialect fragmentation
- Dharwad, Mangalore, Mysuru, and Bengaluru Kannada all sound different
- Kannada has significant regional variation: Dharwad (northern) Kannada, Mangalore Tulu-influenced Kannada, Mysuru variety, and Bengaluru urban Kannada each carry different vowel realizations, prosody, and vocabulary. Bengaluru Kannada is heavily influenced by Hindi and English and sounds substantially different from the Dharwad variety a patient from northern Karnataka may have calibrated their lip-reading to.
Bengaluru code-switching
- Urban Kannada in Bengaluru clinics mixes Kannada, Hindi, and English constantly
- Bengaluru's multilingual population means clinical consultations regularly switch between Kannada, Hindi, Tamil, and English — often within a single sentence. A deaf Kannada speaker encounters English drug names, Hindi terms from North Indian doctors, Tamil vocabulary from Tamil Nadu-trained staff, and then Kannada for the explanation. Each switch breaks the phonological context a lip-reader depends on.
Fast clinical delivery
- Karnataka's busy government hospitals move consultations at speed
- Government hospitals in Bengaluru, Mysuru, and Hubli see enormous patient volumes. Doctors with limited time speak quickly and compactly, reducing unstressed syllables and running words together. In this delivery, a deaf patient catches perhaps one word in three — and in Kannada's consonant-heavy delivery, the words caught may not be the ones that carry the clinical meaning.
Download for free
Download on theApp Store63 million with hearing impairment in India. Bengaluru's tech boom serves the world — and misses its own deaf community.
India has approximately 63 million people with significant hearing impairment — the second-largest hearing loss population of any country. Karnataka, with a population of 68 million and one of India's fastest-growing urban agglomerations in Bengaluru, carries a proportionate share of this burden alongside a specific demographic challenge: rapid rural-to-urban migration has brought large numbers of older adults with unaddressed hearing loss into a healthcare system not designed for their communication needs. More than 27,000 children are born deaf in India annually, with neonatal screening inconsistent across Karnataka's government hospital network.
The Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act 2016 recognised Indian Sign Language and mandated accessibility in public healthcare facilities. Disability advocacy organisations in Karnataka have documented the gap between legal mandate and clinical practice: no rule in the RPwD Act requires ISL-trained staff in hospitals, state interpreter registries remain aspirational, and the fast pace of Bengaluru's specialist hospitals leaves deaf patients without the time or support to ask for repetition. A deaf patient at a private hospital in Bengaluru — potentially among the most technologically advanced medical facilities in Asia — has no more real-time communication access than a patient at a rural dispensary.
The irony is stark. Bengaluru's technology industry serves hundreds of millions globally with sophisticated communication tools — yet deaf residents of the city itself navigate clinical consultations with no real-time text access to what their doctor is saying. Captio AI captions Kannada clinical speech in real time — at the medical shop, the specialist outpatient at NIMHANS, or the emergency room at Victoria Hospital — giving deaf Kannadigas access to the consultation they are already attending.
Download for free
Download on theApp StoreWhat you hear stays with you.
Gone the moment it ends
Captio AI processes your audio in real time and discards it immediately. Nothing is recorded. Nothing is kept.
Not a product
Your conversations are not something Captio AI sells, shares, or monetizes — to anyone, for any reason.
Not used to train anything
What you say in a doctor's appointment or a job interview never ends up in a training dataset. Not ours. Not anyone else's.
Private by default
Download on theApp StoreCaptio AI supports 60+ languages
People love Captio AI
"My doctor switches between English, Hindi, and Kannada every few sentences. I was missing all three languages. Captio AI captions the full mix and I read my diagnosis and prescription in real time."
"No interpreter is available at the government hospital. My doctor speaks Mysore Kannada which is different from the Bengaluru Kannada I grew up with. Captio AI handles both and I follow the appointment fully."
"The medical shop pharmacist speaks Northern Kannada and gives instructions quickly. I was guessing at dosage information. Now I read every word on Captio AI before I leave the counter."
"My psychiatrist speaks formal Shuddha Kannada that I struggle with — I know everyday Hasa Kannada but the clinical terms are very different. Captio AI captions the full session and I engage properly in my own mental health care."
"My doctor switches between English, Hindi, and Kannada every few sentences. I was missing all three languages. Captio AI captions the full mix and I read my diagnosis and prescription in real time."
"No interpreter is available at the government hospital. My doctor speaks Mysore Kannada which is different from the Bengaluru Kannada I grew up with. Captio AI handles both and I follow the appointment fully."
"The medical shop pharmacist speaks Northern Kannada and gives instructions quickly. I was guessing at dosage information. Now I read every word on Captio AI before I leave the counter."
"My psychiatrist speaks formal Shuddha Kannada that I struggle with — I know everyday Hasa Kannada but the clinical terms are very different. Captio AI captions the full session and I engage properly in my own mental health care."
Download for free
Download on theApp StoreFrequently asked questions
Understand your diagnosis in Kannada.
Captio AI is free to start
coming soon
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