Vocia AI Assistant

Vocia, an AI receptionist for medical practices. German practices don't have enough staff to answer the phone. I designed Vocia to take the routine calls, say clearly that it is an AI, and pass everything else to the team with the context they need to call back.

year

2026

timeframe

3 weeks

tools

Claude Code, Figma, GitHub

research

01 · Empathize Who is on the line At a practice reception, the phone rings while a patient is standing at the desk. Someone has to choose which one to ignore. ~6 months to fill a dental assistant post. About 43% of dental practices have already cut services because of missing staff. Zi survey for KZBV · 1,900 dentists 95% of GP practices still take bookings by phone or at the desk. In dental practices it is 100%. PKV Institut 2026 · 1,600+ practice staff She called for a week and a half, at different times of day, and only ever reached a machine telling her to send an email. A 66-year-old patient, reported by Tagesspiegel/KNA, January 2025 She did everything right and still couldn't get through. The second thing that stuck was a detail from Deutsches Ärzteblatt (7/2024). An ENT doctor cancelled his AI phone assistant because only about two in ten callers made it past its menu. In the same article, a dentist said calls with the bot took about 3 minutes instead of 11, but most of his patients still wanted a person.

key insights

Practice manager Sets the rules Enters opening hours, holidays and the stand-in practice. Usually does it between other tasks. Open question: would she trust text that Vocia writes for her, or rewrite it every time? Reception (MFA / ZFA) Calls people back Answers the phone between patients and works through callbacks in quiet minutes. Open question: how much context does she need before a callback, and how much is too much to read? Caller, 65+ Wants a person Phones rather than books online. Needs clear dates and an obvious way to reach someone. Open question: does hearing "I am an AI assistant" make him hang up, or make him calmer?

The practice team's panel on desktop, and clickable prototype.

Figma

02 · Define

What Vocia must never do

The risk I cared about most was a caller getting a wrong answer, hearing "booked" when nothing was booked, or not finding a way to a person.

How might an AI receptionist take routine calls off the team without leaving any caller stuck, misinformed or unable to reach a person?

I read the rules before drawing anything

Healthcare is regulated, so I wanted to know the limits first. Since 2 August 2026 the EU AI Act says an AI that talks to people has to tell them so, at the latest at the first interaction. German criminal and data protection law adds more. Most of these rules ended up as concrete decisions on screen.

Rule	What it asks	What I did in the design
EU AI Act, Art. 50	Tell people they are talking to an AI, clearly, at first contact	The first sentence of every call says Vocia is an AI assistant. The team can edit the greeting but can't remove that sentence.
§201 StGB	No recording of the spoken word without consent	The greeting mentions transcription and offers a way to staff before any details are asked for.
GDPR Art. 9, CJEU C-21/23	Even booking details can count as health data	Callers pick a neutral appointment type. Vocia doesn't ask about symptoms or store them.
AI Act draft high-risk guidelines	Scheduling tools are out of scope; emergency triage is high-risk	No triage. Emergency words get a fixed message with 112, or 116117 outside opening hours.
§203 StGB, DSK guidance 2024	Professional secrecy and real human oversight	Staff see short summaries instead of full transcripts, and can correct anything Vocia wrote down.

Three questions I asked of every screen

Does it show something as done when it isn't? A booking that the calendar hasn't confirmed says "requested", never "booked".
Does it let the AI decide something medical? If yes, it goes to a person. That includes the FAQ the team builds up.
Is there a way to a person from here? Every branch of a conversation ends in a transfer or a callback.

03 · Ideate

Looking at what already exists

There are already many products. Doctolib bought aaron.ai in 2024, CGM launched its own assistant, and at least eight other vendors sell to German practices for about €49 to €600 a month. All of them answer, sort and book. I looked at what they don't show.