Dental service organization (DSO) Heartland Dental was sued in a class action lawsuit, which claims the DSO allegedly uses a telephone service that employs artificial intelligence (AI) to analyze patient phone calls without patients' knowledge.
Megan Lisota, a patient of the Heartland Dental-supported Tru Family Dental, claimed in a lawsuit filed on July 3 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division, that her phone calls to the dental practice were monitored by RingCentral AI without her knowledge or consent.
Lisota is requesting a jury trial in the case, which she claims violates the U.S. Wiretap Act. The lawsuit includes U.S. residents who had any phone contact with Heartland Dental or any of its DSO-managed dental clinics.
“Plaintiff and the Class have suffered harm because of Defendants’ violation of the Federal Wiretap Act,” according to the lawsuit.
Within the last two years, Lisota called Tru Family Dental several times. During the calls, she claimed she identified herself and inquired about making appointments to receive dental treatment.
Currently, Heartland Dental is affiliated with more than 1,700 dental practices.
Heartland allegedly allowed RingCentral, which uses AI to transcribe, summarize, and analyze calls, to listen in on the calls and analyze them in real time. However, neither the DSO nor the practice reportedly informed Lisota and other patients. Also, Lisota claimed she had no reason to believe that a third party was eavesdropping and analyzing her calls.
Furthermore, the lawsuit alleges that RingCentral uses patient calls for its own purposes. It reportedly uses patient calls to train its AI models and develop products and services for other customers, according to the lawsuit.
