Patients in a South Yorkshire town are frustrated by an AI GP receptionist not understanding their “broad accents”, a health watchdog has said. Healthwatch Rotherham, a local health and social care watchdog, said a number of practices in the area had introduced a new AI receptionist called Emma. It said it was hearing accounts of the AI not understanding local accents.
Its manager, Kym Gleeson, told the BBC: “One of the issues is this system can’t always understand what people’s inquiry is about due to their broad Yorkshire accent. There are different twangs so there’s a lot of variation. It seems the system isn’t always able to understand, so that causes frustration.” The system, which is being used by an increasing number of GP surgeries across the UK, aims to answer every patient call “instantly”, eliminating the often long wait times patients experience in a phone queue, waiting to speak to a receptionist.
Gleeson said Emma had the potential to be a good system, but one disgruntled patient told Health “I could never get it to understand me, I ended up just hanging up and not bothering to try and book an appointment.” The feedback came after the watchdog contacted groups representing older people and veterans’ communities, Gleeson said. The usual route of using a telephone was no longer a comfortable process for them.” Healthwatch said concerns around Emma were heightened when considering people less confident about using digital technology, or people with disabilities. A spokesperson told the BBC: “Emma does not make clinical decisions.
She is designed and trained to understand a wide range of accents and dialects and supports 17 languages in addition to English. Where she is unable to understand or deal with a patient’s request the call is transferred to the reception team. No caller is required to continue speaking with Emma, and anyone can ask to speak to a member of staff at any time.
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