AI phone assistant for radiology practices
Half a radiology call is the safety checklist. Tel-Agent asks it every time, records the answers, and transfers anything that is not a clear no.
- Which scan
- Metal or implants
- Claustrophobia
Why a radiology booking is a safety checklist first
Booking a scan is mostly a checklist, and it is a checklist with real consequences - an MRI with unreported metal is a cancelled appointment at best. Half of a radiology call is preparation the patient has to hear days before, and the other half is questions that decide whether the scan can happen at all.
How the AI receptionist handles a radiology appointment call
It answers and asks which examination is on the referral, and who referred.
It works through the safety questions - metal, implants, a pacemaker, pregnancy - every time.
Any answer that is not a clear no is transferred to a person rather than recorded and moved past.
It asks about claustrophobia, which is better handled a week early than on the table.
It reads back the practice's own preparation instructions for that examination and sends them as a message.
What the agent is told to ask
Written by you, in your own words, as the assistant’s instructions.
What a radiology phone assistant should and should not decide
What it does
- Asks the full safety checklist on every call, without skipping
- Records the answers in the patient's own words
- Transfers on anything that is not a clear no
- Reads out the practice's own preparation instructions
- Keeps recordings on the practice's own server
What it never does
- Clear anybody for a scan
- Decide that an implant or a device is safe
- Give a result or discuss an image
- Compose preparation instructions of its own
- Hold patient data outside the practice
Questions
Are the safety questions safe to ask by assistant?
Asking them is; deciding on the answers is not. The value is that they get asked every time and written down. Any answer other than a clear no goes to a person - the point of a checklist is that it is never skipped, not that it replaces the radiographer.
Can it give preparation instructions?
It can read out the practice's own instructions for the examination on the referral, and send them as a message. It does not compose them.
Does it give results?
No. Results go from a doctor to a patient, and nothing on this page changes that.
What if a patient is unsure about an implant?
Unsure is not a no, and it is treated as one of the answers that transfers. The value of the checklist is that it is asked consistently and that anything short of a clear no reaches a person.
Can it send preparation instructions?
It reads out the practice's own instructions for the examination on the referral and can send them as a message. It does not compose instructions, and it does not adapt them to a patient.
Does it reduce cancelled scans?
That is the argument for it. A scan cancelled on the day because of unreported metal or an unprepared patient costs a full slot, and the questions that prevent it are ones a checklist can ask a week early.
Does the EU AI Act allow an AI to answer a scan appointment?
Yes, under Article 50 of Regulation 2024/1689, which asks that the caller be told they are speaking to a machine - that line belongs in the greeting you configure. Annex III names emergency healthcare triage, so anything that ranked callers by how ill they sound would be a high-risk system. The distinction the Act draws is between assisting and deciding, and this agent assists: it never judges how urgent a symptom is. Austria's KI-Servicestelle at RTR publishes the same reading of the transparency duty.
Who is the data controller for what a caller to a radiology practice says on the phone?
You are. A scan appointment is health data, which Article 9 treats as a special category, and Tel-Agent is self-hosted with your own model keys, so the recording, the transcript and the record it writes stay on your server and never reach Dpro GmbH. There is no processor agreement to sign with us because we never receive the data, and the source is AGPL-3.0, so you can check that rather than take our word for it.
Can a radiology practice run this in the United States?
There is no single federal AI statute to comply with, but a phone line carries older rules. A US practice is under HIPAA, and HIPAA is where self-hosting pays: there is no business associate agreement to sign with us, because no call reaches us. Consent to record is set state by state, and California and Illinois among others want every party to agree. Running the software yourself makes you the caller of record, so the disclosure and the recording switch are yours to set.
Not usable yet. The day it answers a real call will be a release, not a newsletter.
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