How it works
You should not have to find the English word for your own pain.
Keiro sits in the twenty minutes before your appointment, the part where you are rehearsing, in a language you are still learning, how to explain what is wrong.
When a patient and a doctor do not share a language, things go wrong quietly. Symptoms described in the wrong words. Instructions half-understood. A person nodding because nodding is easier than asking the nurse to slow down again.
And the worst outcome is the one nobody records: the person who does not come in at all, because the appointment feels harder than the symptom.
What actually happens, start to finish.
Three steps, and you can stop after any of them.
You talk. Kai listens.
Pick the language you use at home, then say what hurts. Out loud, or typed if you prefer. There is no form. Most people take about five minutes.
Or just talk. Typing on a cracked screen, in a script your keyboard barely supports, is a barrier we badly underestimate.
Kai asks, rather than assumes.
When something is unclear, Kai asks you about it instead of writing down a confident guess. That single behaviour is the difference between an intake companion and a translation app.
Kai · speaking EspañolHola, soy Kai. Cuéntame qué te duele, con tus propias palabras.
Me duele el pecho cuando subo las escaleras. Empezó hace tres días.
Gracias. ¿El dolor se va cuando descansas?
Kai asks a follow-up. A translation app would have translated the sentence and stopped.
Your doctor reads it first.
Before you sit down, your doctor already knows why you came. You read the summary before they do. If it is wrong, it goes no further.
Intake summary
English- Presenting complaint
- Chest pain on exertion
- Onset
- 3 days ago
- Trigger
- Climbing stairs
- Relieved by
- Rest
- Language
- Spanish (es-ES)
No diagnosis. No triage score. Just what the patient said, in a form a clinician can read.
The help that exists, and where it runs out.
None of this is because clinics do not care. It is because the tools available to them are thin.
What you have today
What it gives you
Where it runs out
A professional interpreter
The right answer, when you can get one. A trained person who carries your meaning, not just your words.
Expensive, booked out, and rarely standing in the room at the moment you actually need to say something.
The phone line
Someone qualified, eventually, without anyone having to travel to you.
You are handed a receiver and put on hold. By the time someone picks up, the doctor has moved on.
A family member
Somebody who is already there, already trusted, and free.
Often a child. A ten-year-old should not be asked to say the word for “bleeding”, or to hear a diagnosis first and pass it on.
A translation app
Instant, free, and in your pocket. It will convert the words you type.
It does not know that “my chest is heavy” is worth three more questions, and it hands your doctor nothing they can read.
Filling in a form
Something written down, in the order a clinic wants to read it.
Forms assume you already know the medical word for what you feel. That assumption is the entire problem, restated as a text field.
Hoping for the best
Nothing. It is what most people fall back on anyway.
It ends with people not coming in at all — and that is the outcome nobody records.
The technology, in plain words.
You do not need to understand any of this to use Keiro. But you are entitled to know what happens to your words, so here it is without the jargon.
When you speak, your voice becomes text, the same way the dictation button on your phone works. That text goes to a language model: a program that has read an enormous amount of writing and is good at understanding what people mean, not just what they said.
It replies in your language, and it decides what to ask next based on what you have already told it. At the end, the conversation is condensed into a structured summary in English: the sections a clinician expects, in the order they expect them.
That is the whole trick. No diagnosis engine, no scoring, no algorithm deciding anything about your care. Kai is a very good listener with very good handwriting. The limits we put on it are spelled out in privacy & safety.
- Speech → text
- Language model
- Follow-up questions
- Summary
- Your voice
- Transcribed, then discarded
- Your words
- Read by a language model
- The questions
- Chosen from what you said
- The output
- A written English summary
- The diagnosis
- None. That is your doctor.
The part nobody explains: what happens after.
- What do I actually walk away with?
- A summary you can read. You can bring it with you, or send it ahead. You can also decide not to send it at all. Nothing goes anywhere until you say so.
- Does my doctor need an account?
- No. The summary is just clear written English. Your doctor reads it the way they would read any other note. Nothing to install, nothing to sign up for.
- What if I change my mind halfway through?
- Then you stop. Closing the tab is a complete and acceptable way to leave, and there is nothing to cancel.
- How long does it take?
- Most people take about five minutes. There is no timer, and nothing bad happens if you take twenty.