In the past few years, AI solutions have proven that they can translate, transcribe, and even interpret speech in seconds. They’re affordable and can work around the clock. For healthcare organizations under pressure to serve diverse communities, they can seem like the perfect solution. But here’s the thing: medical care is about more than words. It’s about context, empathy, and risk management.
Can artificial intelligence capture these qualities the same way a trained medical interpreter can? Should it even attempt to?
In this article, we’ll explore where AI interpreting fits in a healthcare setting, and where it doesn’t. With insights from our recent webinar, “Smarter Language Access: When and How to Use AI Interpretation in Healthcare Settings”, we’ll examine a practical framework for healthcare leaders to decide when to use AI and depend on a human interpreter in the patient journey.
What is a Medical Interpreter?
Medical interpreters facilitate accurate, culturally sensitive, and confidential communication between healthcare providers and patients who do not share a common language so that they can understand each other accurately. They also act as intermediaries for conversations where cultural or linguistic nuances are important.
Picture a quiet hospital room with two people sitting across from each other: an English-speaking doctor and a Spanish-speaking patient. Although they’re within the same four walls, they’re separated by a language barrier that makes communication nearly impossible.
This is why medical interpreters are so invaluable for any hospital or clinic.
What Qualities Do Medical Interpreters Have?
- Accuracy. In healthcare, the simplest misunderstanding can jeopardize patient care and safety, making accuracy the most important foundation for providing quality care.
- Adherence to Privacy and Confidentiality. Both regulations and professional ethics require patient privacy and confidentiality standards, which extend to interpreter service providers working for healthcare organizations.
- Cultural Understanding. Interpreters bring cultural awareness when facilitating communication between providers and patients. They can help point to potential cultural misunderstandings, for example, from a patient’s dietary plans that adhere to faith-based beliefs and mental health support that considers cultural backgrounds and lived experiences.
- Ethics. Every qualified healthcare interpreter adheres to a national code of ethics that requires them to maintain an impartial, professional, and respectful relationship with patients and providers, ensuring the highest standards of ethical conduct.
- Impartiality. Healthcare interpreters set their beliefs aside to provide quality service without adding their opinions or biases to care, treatments, and whatever choice their patients make.
AI When it Fits, Human When it Counts
While human interpreters bring empathy, cultural awareness, and conversation management skills, AI brings something different. The question shouldn’t be whether one should replace the other, but how they can work together to expand language access in hospitals and clinics. This begs the question: where does AI fit in interpreting services for healthcare?
AI fits into healthcare as a support tool that extends access, improves efficiency, and fills the gaps where human interpreters aren’t immediately available. AI Interpreters should still be used sparingly in healthcare settings because, as Dean McMillan, Director of Enterprise at Boostlingo, stressed: “Just because a tool exists does not mean it’s the right one for the job.”
A Framework for Integrating AI into Your Language Access Plan
In every interpreting scenario, there are two dimensions: complexity and risk. For complexity, you need to determine how much nuance and specialized language the conversation requires, while risk identifies the consequences if something is misunderstood.
If you’re confused about where and how you can get started, Boostlingo follows a simple framework for decision-making while considering the different levels of complexity and risk:
Check out our Buyers Guide for AI Interpreting to learn more about evaluating AI tools for your language plan.
Where AI Makes Sense
AI interpreters shine in healthcare settings during routine, low-risk interactions. AI can lead the process in parts of care where accuracy matters, but the stakes are lower, like everyday, administrative, non-clinical exchanges. Some examples include:
- Scheduling and setting appointments
- Non-clinical intake questions
- Post-discharge instructions and billing
- Medication pick-up instructions
- Speech recognition to supplement or even replace “I Speak” cards
- Supporting tools for faster transcripts, summaries, and definition lookups
AI interpreting tools can also greatly benefit rural hospitals and clinics, as well as after-hours and weekend care, since human interpreters aren’t always readily available in those settings. They prevent patients from being misunderstood or left waiting, especially when speed and coverage are important. In these cases, though, it’s important for human interpreters to still be within reach, especially since lower-risk interactions can quickly escalate.
Put simply, if it’s a routine process with lower risk, you can consider allowing AI to take the reins.
Where AI Shouldn’t Lead
Despite these capabilities, there are areas of healthcare where AI should not be at the forefront of healthcare interpreting. For instance, complex, high-risk clinical exchanges where miscommunication can result in harm or lawsuits shouldn’t be led by AI. Here are some specific situations:
- Clinical decisions, like diagnoses, treatment plans, and changes in medication
- Informed consent
- Mental health and end-of-life care
- Financial and legal disputes
The Hybrid Middle Ground
Since AI became more widely used, conversations have been framed as “AI versus humans”, along with worries about how it’s set to replace human specialization. In healthcare, interpreting this “either or” framework is misguided. The best approach is to design a workflow where both play to their strengths; a hybrid model that redefines what quality language access looks like.
In our webinar, Merrie Wallace, MN BSN, Chief Revenue Officer at Boostlingo, shared that the best approach is to “use AI to start the conversation with the patient, then roll over to a human interpreter once it gets too complex or if the risk goes up.”
The hybrid approach begins with an AI-first exchange, providing patients with immediate, convenient, and accessible access during scheduling, arrival, and check-in. The conversation is then handed off to a human interpreter during initial nurse assessments and consultation.
During diagnostic testing, results, and treatment planning, where conversations are often complex, emotional, or legally sensitive, your human interpreter will work with the patient and doctors. At the same time, AI can assist with transcription, documentation, and record-keeping.
Once the treatment plan has been implemented, AI can once again take over during the discharge process, providing post-visit care instructions and medication pick-up.
Reimagining the Patient Journey with AI Interpreting
9 out of 10 healthcare professionals expect the need for interpreting to grow next year. Dean McMillan shared that to address that growth, nearly “55% (of healthcare workers) were comfortable using AI interpreting for non-clinical tasks.”
A hybrid model of healthcare interpreting is emerging: AI handles check-in, human interpreters guide the nurse assessment and treatment, and AI returns for the procedure and testing. This model helps hospitals and clinics solve several real-world challenges:
- Access gaps. AI can fill immediate gaps for healthcare facilities that rarely have interpreters available 24/7 for all languages.
- Budget constraints. AI can reduce costs in routine interactions while reserving human interpreters for important conversations.
- Workflow fit. AI integrated into the workflow can help hospital and clinic personnel connect to interpreters and their patients faster.
- Support. AI can support human interpreters and providers through language detection, transcriptions, and documentation.
Hybrid Interpreting Solution for Healthcare
When language barriers go unaddressed, entire communities feel the impact. Boostlingo AI Interpreter was built to help with that, fitting in when human interpreters aren’t immediately available or needed and escalating to a professional interpreter when it counts.
See how Boostlingo can help you close language gaps and deliver confident and connected care all from a single app.
Request a demo from our team today!
