A free dental clinic in Roanoke, VA, is piloting a new AI-assisted translation platform designed to improve communication between English-speaking clinicians and Spanish-speaking patients, and the early results show it could have broad implications for practices serving diverse communities. The innovation was highlighted in a June 18 Cardinal News article.
Three Virginia Tech graduates designed the tool for the Bradley Free Clinic, where 30% to 40% of the clinic's roughly 3,800 annual patients speak Spanish as their primary language.
With a single click, clinicians can pull up patient education content covering topics such as gingivitis, tooth extractions, and bone loss. The platform reads the information aloud in Spanish while displaying a text description on an operatory monitor. It also includes simple chairside instructions, like "Turn your head toward me," that dentists and hygienists use during routine appointments.
"It's been especially helpful for new patients -- just explaining how to stand in front of the panoramic x-ray and how to bite on the tabs for bitewings," Dr. Megan Milburn, a general dentist at the clinic, said.
AI tool not only bridges communication gaps but workflow friction
Before the tool was introduced, the clinic relied on third-party telephone interpretation services. While functional, those services added roughly 10 minutes per appointment, required clinicians to wait on hold for an available interpreter, and the calls could be dropped, forcing clinicians to reinitiate the process.
Those delays added up for the clinic. Milburn said the delays could cost the clinic the equivalent of one or two additional patient visits per day.
There's also a quality-of-care dimension. Ridi Barua, one of the student developers, said that valuable post-procedural instructions were at risk of being lost because of the language barrier. "When the procedure is done, you want to make sure that the patient understands what's happening, what they need to do for their maintenance and care," Barua said.
The new translation tool reduces wait time and standardizes clinical language to explain procedures and home care.
Built with clinical input
The students -- Barua, Mahrukh Siddiqui, and Sarah Scheerer -- were part of Virginia Tech's Carilion Clinic Biodesign Program, a partnership that involves students with clinical and engineering backgrounds to solve healthcare delivery challenges in rural settings.
The development team spent roughly a year building the platform, working directly with dentists and hygienists at the Bradley Free Clinic to create scripts and procedure explanations that reflect actual common chairside workflows. The tool uses GitHub, an open-access platform, and is accessible on every operatory computer in the clinic.
Although Barua, Siddiqui, and Scheerer have since graduated, their hope is the next cohort will expand the platform to support languages, including Urdu, Farsi, and Dari, and potentially extend it to other medical specialties.
The bigger picture for dental practices
Language barriers are an underaddressed challenge in dental care, particularly in communities with growing immigrant populations. For practices without bilingual staff, third-party interpretation services are often the most relied on solution, but as the Bradley Free Clinic's experience illustrates, those services come with real financial and productivity costs.
AI translation tools could represent a lower-friction alternative, particularly for procedures or issues common in dental practice, such as x-ray positioning, instrument instructions, treatment explanations, post-op care, and routine patient education.
For dental teams working in or near communities with significant non-English-speaking populations, this tool -- whether it's built in-house, locally, or is eventually available commercially -- may become a practical part of delivering both efficient and equitable care.
