Melissa McCarron Uses AI to Improve Health Care for Spanish Speakers
Melissa McCarron, a clinical assistant professor of Spanish at the University at Buffalo, is finding creative ways to make health care more accessible for Spanish-speaking communities with the help of artificial intelligence (AI).
While some educators worry about students using AI to cheat, McCarron is focused on teaching students to use it responsibly. Her goal is to help future health care workers communicate more effectively with patients who don’t speak English well — especially those from the Latinx community.
“We want students to feel confident using AI in a smart and respectful way,” she says. “By learning to use these tools carefully, they can make a real difference in people’s lives.”
In the classroom, McCarron uses AI to create patient profiles and medical role-play scenarios in Spanish. This helps students learn how to speak with patients in a respectful and culturally sensitive way.
“I was initially motivated to harness AI upon conversing with local health care providers about the communication challenges they face in clinical settings and how our students might assist in building resources for them,” McCarron says.
Her work is supported by grants from UB and SUNY. One of her main goals is to develop AI tools that help doctors and nurses communicate better with Spanish-speaking patients. She is also building a network of students from different fields — including medicine, language, and technology — to collaborate on these efforts.
