175: The Relaxback UK Show with Mike Dilke - Episode 175175: The Relaxback UK Show with Mike Dilke - Episode 175
UK Health Radio Podcast
Mike Dilke chats with Bart Vaughan about a patient app that records and summarises doctor consultations, aiming to help people remember and share vital medical information. The conversation touches on language barriers, privacy choices, and how families can use summaries to support each other around health issues.
36:17•14 Jul 2026
Remembering What Your Doctor Said: Mike Dilke Talks With Ditto’s Bart Vaughan
Episode Overview
- Many patients forget a large part of what doctors say, especially in stressful or complex consultations.
- Ditto lets patients record appointments, generates structured summaries, and explains medical terms in everyday language.
- Summaries can be translated into several languages and shared with a chosen care circle of family and friends.
- The system uses strict AI guardrails, refusing to deliver a summary if there is doubt about accuracy and offering human review in rare cases.
- Ditto is built so conversations are stored only on patients’ phones, with no central database and strict privacy protections.
“"We see that people forget or are unable to recall up to 60, 70% of what their medical professional is telling them."”
What can we learn from those who have battled confusion in medical appointments? This Relaxback UK Show episode looks at how easily people forget what doctors say and why that can be risky for their health. Host Mike Dilke talks with guest Bart Vaughan, co-founder of Ditto, a patient-focused app designed to make medical consultations clearer and easier to remember.
Bart shares how it all started with his dad coming home from two hospital appointments saying, "yeah, they were all right, all good" – yet he couldn’t explain what had actually been discussed. That moment led Bart to dig into the wider issue that people forget up to "60, 70%" of what health professionals tell them.
You’ll hear how Ditto lets patients record a consultation on their phone, generates a structured summary in everyday language, and can translate that summary into multiple languages for families with diverse backgrounds. The app highlights agreed actions like what the doctor told you, what happens next, and what you can do yourself, which is especially useful in serious care paths such as oncology, cardiology, and neurodegenerative conditions. Bart and Mike also unpack the thorny topics of consent and privacy.
Bart explains that Ditto doesn’t store conversations centrally and wipes data traces from its systems within seconds, keeping summaries on the patient’s device only. He jokes that people assume there’s "a big database", but his team chose a radical approach so they "don't want to be able to hear the conversations" at all.
A standout part of the discussion is how often patients share summaries with loved ones, forming a "care circle" that can step in with practical help when health issues arise. For busy patients, carers, and anyone dealing with complex diagnoses, this episode offers a down-to-earth look at how technology might reduce stress and misunderstanding around medical advice. If you’ve ever left an appointment thinking, "what did they just say?", this conversation might be exactly what you need next.
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