Tamil 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 Tamil doctor appointments
Four tools built for deaf and hard of hearing Tamil 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
Download for free
Download on theApp StoreEvery situation covered
Designed for the real moments that matter — not just quiet controlled environments.
Government hospital OPD visits in Tamil Nadu at district hospitals, where consultation time is short and patient volumes are high.
Specialist consultations at major public hospitals in Chennai, where medical terminology is dense and clinical pace is fast.
Pharmacy counter consultations at a medical shop, where the pharmacist explains dosage in Tamil mixed with English drug names.
Dental appointments, where the dentist continues speaking during treatment and the patient cannot turn to lip-read.
Mental health consultations at a psychiatry clinic, where follow-up questions are frequent and tone carries clinical meaning.
Private clinic visits in smaller towns like Madurai, Coimbatore, or Trichy, where the regional Tamil accent may differ from Chennai speech.
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 Tamil is hard to understand
Vowel length invisible
- Short and long vowels look identical on lips
- Tamil has five vowel pairs where length is the only difference — a/ā, i/ī, u/ū, e/ē, o/ō. The distinction is purely durational: the mouth holds the same position for longer, with no change in shape or visible movement. In a medical consultation, a deaf patient cannot tell 'malam' (stool) from 'mālam' (garland) — or more critically, cannot distinguish minimal pairs in drug names and dosage terms that rely on vowel length.
Retroflex consonants
- Five retroflex sounds are invisible on the lips
- Tamil has five retroflex consonants — ட, ண, ல, ழ, ற — produced with the tongue curled back toward the palate. The retroflex articulation happens inside the mouth and produces lip positions nearly identical to their dental or alveolar counterparts. In clinical speech, words distinguished only by their retroflex-versus-non-retroflex consonant are visually indistinguishable.
Diglossia in the clinic
- Formal and colloquial Tamil are used in the same appointment
- Tamil has one of the most pronounced diglossias of any living language. Formal written Tamil (sentamil) used in medical reports and institutional announcements sounds radically different from the spoken colloquial Tamil (koṭuntamiḻ) a doctor uses when explaining a diagnosis. A deaf patient fluent in one register may not recognise words spoken in the other, even in a single consultation.
Sri Lankan vs Indian Tamil
- Tamil from Sri Lanka and Tamil Nadu sound distinctly different
- Sri Lankan Tamil has retained older consonant distinctions and developed different vowel qualities from Indian Tamil. The varieties spoken in Jaffna, Colombo, Chennai, and Madurai all differ measurably in phonology and vocabulary. A deaf Tamil speaker from Chennai attending a clinic in London serving the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora — or vice versa — encounters a different set of phoneme patterns in the same language.
Tamil–English code-switch
- Clinical Tamil inserts English terms without transition
- In urban Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka, doctors embed English terms — 'BP', 'ECG', 'sugar' (for diabetes), 'injection' — into Tamil sentences. A deaf patient following Tamil lip patterns is abruptly confronted with English phoneme structure, a different rhythm, and different mouth shapes, mid-sentence and without warning.
Download for free
Download on theApp Store63 million Indians with hearing loss. Tamil Nadu screening without clinical communication support.
India has approximately 63 million people with significant auditory impairment according to WHO estimates, representing 6.3% of the population. Hearing disability is the second most common cause of disability in India and the leading sensory deficit, with rural populations disproportionately affected. Tamil Nadu is among the states that have run regular hearing screening camps and has been cited as a relatively proactive state on the NPPCD (National Programme for Prevention and Control of Deafness). A 2009 study published in PMC examined costs and health effects of hearing screening delivery in Tamil Nadu, finding that early identification and hearing aid provision is cost-effective — but implementation remains incomplete.
Screening identifies people with hearing loss; it does not solve communication access inside the clinical encounter. India has no statutory requirement for hospitals to provide sign language interpreters. Indian Sign Language (ISL) was adopted as an official language in 2023, but the 2011 census data had already found that 73.9% of Indians aged 15–59 with hearing disability were only marginal workers — a figure that reflects decades of inadequate communication access in education and employment. Healthcare access compounds the problem: a deaf patient who cannot follow medical instructions is more likely to misuse medication and miss follow-up appointments.
The Tamil-speaking deaf diaspora in Singapore, Malaysia, the UK, and Canada face an additional layer of complexity. Accessing healthcare in a country whose primary healthcare language is English or Malay — while communicating in Tamil at home — means a Tamil-speaking deaf adult navigates two language gaps simultaneously: the gap between their hearing loss and the clinical speech around them, and the gap between Tamil and the country's dominant clinical language.
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 at Government Stanley Hospital speaks fast colloquial Tamil mixed with English medicine names. I was missing the dosage every time. Now I place my phone on the consultation table and read everything in real time. First time I've left a consultation fully informed."
"The doctor in Madurai speaks Madurai Tamil which sounds different from Chennai Tamil. The accent was already hard for me to lip-read. Captio AI handles the regional variety accurately — I understand what I'm being prescribed."
"At the polyclinic in Singapore the doctor speaks English, but my follow-up call to a Tamil-speaking specialist in India is all Tamil. Captio AI works for both. I save transcripts from both appointments and compare them at home."
"Sri Lankan Tamil pronunciation is different from Indian Tamil. Even Tamil speakers from India sometimes struggle to understand me. Captio AI handles the Sri Lankan variety without any difficulty — I finally understand my doctor's appointments."
"My doctor at Government Stanley Hospital speaks fast colloquial Tamil mixed with English medicine names. I was missing the dosage every time. Now I place my phone on the consultation table and read everything in real time. First time I've left a consultation fully informed."
"The doctor in Madurai speaks Madurai Tamil which sounds different from Chennai Tamil. The accent was already hard for me to lip-read. Captio AI handles the regional variety accurately — I understand what I'm being prescribed."
"At the polyclinic in Singapore the doctor speaks English, but my follow-up call to a Tamil-speaking specialist in India is all Tamil. Captio AI works for both. I save transcripts from both appointments and compare them at home."
"Sri Lankan Tamil pronunciation is different from Indian Tamil. Even Tamil speakers from India sometimes struggle to understand me. Captio AI handles the Sri Lankan variety without any difficulty — I finally understand my doctor's appointments."
Download for free
Download on theApp StoreFrequently asked questions
Understand your diagnosis in Tamil.
Captio AI is free to start
coming soon
Download for free
Download on theApp Store