When the Doctor Is Also the Founder: Kyle Lavin on Responsible AI and Language Access in Cancer Care

A palliative care psychiatrist with nearly 20 years of clinical experience, Dr. Kyle Lavin co-founded Cerula Care to bring behavioral health care to cancer patients in community oncology and underserved health systems where supportive care programs simply do not exist. In this episode of Care Culture Talks, he joins Rivka Allouche to talk about what language barriers actually cost in a specialty where the entire clinical encounter runs on words. Dr. Lavin walks through how his teams navigate interpretation today, from in-person interpreters in the inpatient setting to iPad-based video services in outpatient and where both fall short. He makes the case for real-time on-screen transcription as a more natural alternative to the stop-and-start rhythm of traditional remote interpreting and explains why AI-powered language access is the only realistic path to serving the more than 20 languages his community oncology clients in Maryland need covered. The conversation goes deep on responsible adoption: why close human oversight is non-negotiable in a specialty where decisions carry the weight they do in palliative care, what a stepwise patient consent model looks like in practice and why technology companies that move too fast risk the clinician trust they need most. Kyle also shares data from Cerula Care showing that BIPOC and Medicaid patients present with higher depression and anxiety scores and respond to treatment at higher rates, making language access not just a compliance question but a direct equity imperative. If you work in health system leadership, digital health or language access, this episode gives you the clinical grounding the policy debate often skips.