Vietnamese 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 Vietnamese doctor appointments
Four tools built for deaf and hard of hearing Vietnamese 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 outpatient visits (bệnh viện tuyến tỉnh or tuyến trung ương) in Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City, where patient queues are long and consultation time is short.
District health centre (trạm y tế) visits in smaller towns, where the health worker may speak regional Vietnamese and switch between formal and informal registers.
Pharmacy consultations at a nhà thuốc, where the pharmacist explains dosage quickly in Vietnamese 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, where emotional nuance and follow-up questions are central to the appointment.
Telehealth appointments via hospital apps, where audio quality and fast speech create additional challenges for anyone with hearing loss.
Most accurate and fastest models
word accuracy
independent benchmark, 2025
real-time captions
first word appears as you speak
Download for free
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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 Vietnamese is hard to understand
Six tones, almost invisible
- Vietnamese tones are nearly impossible to lip-read
- Northern Vietnamese has six lexical tones; Southern Vietnamese has five. These tones are the primary meaning-differentiator in the language — the same syllable spoken with a different tone is a different word entirely. But pitch and creakiness, which distinguish the tones, are almost entirely auditory. On the lips, the same syllable in six different tones looks nearly identical. A deaf patient watching a doctor's face cannot tell whether the diagnosis is 'ma' (ghost) or 'mã' (horse) — or more clinically, whether 'thuốc' (medicine) is being praised or warned against.
Phonation type contrast
- Two tones differ only by creaky or breathy voice
- Among Vietnamese tones, the ngã and sắc tones are both high-rising but differentiated by the presence of a glottal stop; the nặng and huyền tones are both low-falling but differ in phonation type (creaky vs breathy). These laryngeal distinctions produce no visible lip movement at all. In a clinical consultation, where a doctor may be explaining the severity of a condition, a deaf patient has no visual cue to separate the tones.
North-South dialect split
- Northern and Southern Vietnamese are phonologically distinct
- Northern Vietnamese (Hanoi) and Southern Vietnamese (Ho Chi Minh City) differ in consonant inventory, tone count, and vowel realization. A deaf patient from the north attending a clinic in the south — or vice versa — encounters different mouth shapes for the same words. The clinical impact is compounded when medication names or anatomical terms shift pronunciation between regions.
French-English medical vocabulary
- Clinical Vietnamese inserts French and English terms
- Vietnamese medicine retains French-origin vocabulary (a legacy of colonial-era medical education) alongside English technical terms. A doctor at a clinic may say 'áp huyết' (blood pressure) in Vietnamese and then name a drug in English or use a French-derived anatomical term. These language shifts produce entirely different lip patterns with no visual transition signal.
Fast clinical pace
- Outpatient consultations at Vietnamese hospitals move quickly
- State hospital outpatient departments in Vietnam operate under high patient load. Consultations are brief, verbal, and rarely repeated. A deaf patient who misses a diagnosis or medication instruction mid-appointment has almost no opportunity to ask for clarification before being directed to the prescription window.
Download for free
Download on theApp Store2.5 million Vietnamese with hearing disability. Only 7 in 100 with full healthcare access.
The 2016 National Survey on People with Disabilities in Vietnam found that approximately 2.5 million people experience hearing and speech disabilities. Vietnam's government estimates 180,000 children under 18 have hearing loss, with around 116,000 deaf children relying on lip-reading or hearing aids to communicate. Critically, only 7 out of every 100 hearing-impaired people surveyed reported full access to medical services — an access rate of 7%. The barrier cited most often: a shortage of sign language interpreters at healthcare facilities.
Vietnam has made progress in deaf education: in 2022 the World Bank reported that more than 2,000 deaf children benefited from sign language instruction programmes. But these gains have not reached the healthcare system. Vietnamese Sign Language (VSL) is not formally recognised in law, and hospitals are not required to provide interpreter access. A deaf adult attending a state hospital in Vietnam typically has no communication support — they rely on written notes, family, or guesswork to follow a medical consultation.
The data shortage compounds the policy gap. A UNDP report on Vietnamese disability noted a 'serious shortage of data on specific groups of persons with disabilities, especially those who are most marginalized, including persons with hearing and print disabilities.' Without reliable data, policy reform is slow. Meanwhile, millions of Vietnamese people with hearing loss navigate hospitals, pharmacies, and health centres without systematic support.
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
"At Bạch Mai Hospital the doctor speaks Northern Vietnamese very fast. I was missing the tone distinctions in medical words and guessing at my diagnosis. Captio AI captions everything in real time. I finally understood my own test results."
"My doctor in Saigon uses Southern Vietnamese with French medicine names mixed in. The lip patterns switch without warning. Captio AI handles both languages and both regional varieties. I saved the transcript and read my prescription twice before taking it."
"The pharmacist at the nhà thuốc explains things quickly and turns away to get the tablets. I always guessed the dosage. Now I hold Captio AI near the counter and read the instructions as she gives them. No more guessing."
"The doctor at the district health centre speaks Central Vietnamese, which sounds different to both Hanoi and Saigon Vietnamese. I was struggling with the accent on top of my hearing loss. Captio AI captures it accurately — I understand my appointment notes now."
"At Bạch Mai Hospital the doctor speaks Northern Vietnamese very fast. I was missing the tone distinctions in medical words and guessing at my diagnosis. Captio AI captions everything in real time. I finally understood my own test results."
"My doctor in Saigon uses Southern Vietnamese with French medicine names mixed in. The lip patterns switch without warning. Captio AI handles both languages and both regional varieties. I saved the transcript and read my prescription twice before taking it."
"The pharmacist at the nhà thuốc explains things quickly and turns away to get the tablets. I always guessed the dosage. Now I hold Captio AI near the counter and read the instructions as she gives them. No more guessing."
"The doctor at the district health centre speaks Central Vietnamese, which sounds different to both Hanoi and Saigon Vietnamese. I was struggling with the accent on top of my hearing loss. Captio AI captures it accurately — I understand my appointment notes now."
Download for free
Download on theApp StoreFrequently asked questions
Understand your diagnosis in Vietnamese.
Captio AI is free to start
coming soon
Download for free
Download on theApp Store