Northern Ireland start-up ViveoAI is helping dental practices answer every call while adapting voice AI to understand local accents, healthcare workflows and patient needs.
A Northern Ireland healthcare technology start-up is using artificial intelligence to solve one of the most persistent operational challenges facing healthcare practices: missed phone calls.
Coleraine-based ViveoAI has developed AI-powered voice receptionists designed specifically for healthcare providers, beginning with dental practices across Ireland and the UK.
“The problem we are trying to solve is very simple: healthcare practices miss too many phone calls, and reception teams are under enormous pressure”
The company recently attracted national media attention after revealing that Cork accents proved among the most challenging for its voice AI systems to consistently understand.
For founder Sean Higgins, however, the story is less about accents and more about the realities of turning advanced AI technology into a dependable business tool.
“Building an impressive AI demo is relatively easy,” Higgins says. “Building something reliable enough to deal with real patients, real appointment books and real healthcare workflows is much harder.”
Solving a costly problem for healthcare practices
The idea for ViveoAI emerged from years of experience working in healthcare and healthcare marketing.
Higgins trained and worked as an optometrist before moving into digital marketing and business growth for healthcare practices. Alongside his brother Damien, who brings almost three decades of dental marketing experience to the business, he repeatedly encountered the same challenge.
“The problem we are trying to solve is very simple: healthcare practices miss too many phone calls, and reception teams are under enormous pressure.”
In busy practices, receptionists must balance answering phones with managing patients at reception desks, supporting clinicians and maintaining appointment schedules. The result is that calls are often missed, particularly during peak periods.
“For an existing patient that is frustrating. For a new patient looking for an appointment or enquiring about a treatment, it can mean lost business because there is a real chance they simply contact another practice.”
ViveoAI’s technology is designed to act as an additional layer of reception support rather than a replacement for human staff.
“The aim isn’t to replace receptionists. It is to make sure the phone gets answered and allow the human team to concentrate on the patients and situations that need them most.”
Bringing conversational AI to dental practices
The company’s AI receptionist allows patients to speak naturally when they call a healthcare provider.
Rather than navigating automated menus, callers can explain their needs in their own words. The system can answer common questions and, where integrated with practice management software, book, reschedule or cancel appointments.
“The conversation is dynamic,” Higgins explains. “A patient might say, for example, that they have broken a tooth, need an emergency appointment and can only come after work. The AI can understand the context of that request and respond accordingly.”
The platform is customised for individual practices, taking into account opening hours, clinicians, appointment types, booking rules and frequently asked questions.
It can also handle multiple calls simultaneously and continue operating outside normal business hours.
“Ultimately, we are trying to make the experience very simple: a patient phones the practice, explains what they need in their own words, and gets help without having to wait for someone to become available.”
Why dentistry came first
ViveoAI launched initially in the dental sector because Higgins already understood the industry’s operational challenges and commercial realities.
The market opportunity is significant. According to Central Statistics Office figures cited by the company, €725 million of healthcare expenditure was recorded through dental practices in Ireland during 2024, with €523 million coming directly from household spending.
The company’s initial market extends beyond the Republic of Ireland and includes Northern Ireland’s 351 dental practices and 1,180 registered Health Service dentists, with ambitions to expand throughout Ireland and Great Britain.
Higgins believes the same challenges exist across many healthcare settings.
“We don’t see dentistry as the limit of the opportunity. The same reception-capacity problem exists across private healthcare, including optometry, aesthetics and other appointment-led services.”
Learning from real-world AI deployments
One of ViveoAI’s most valuable discoveries came unexpectedly through live deployments.
The company found that regional accents, particularly Cork accents, presented unique challenges for voice recognition models that perform impressively in controlled environments.
“The Cork accent story is a good example. It was not something we went looking for, but something that emerged through real-world use.”
The experience reinforced a lesson that Higgins believes many AI businesses eventually encounter.
“Real callers interrupt, change their minds, have background noise, use unusual names, ask several things at once and sometimes describe what they need in ways you could never have anticipated.”
He adds: “The final 10% of making an AI system genuinely dependable can take as much work as the first 90%.”
The challenges extend beyond speech recognition. Healthcare environments require systems that understand appointment rules, clinician schedules, treatment types, compliance obligations and patient confidentiality requirements.
“Building healthcare AI is as much about understanding workflows, integrations, compliance and operational risk as it is about the underlying AI technology.”
Building from Northern Ireland
Despite being headquartered in Coleraine, Higgins says location presents fewer barriers than in previous generations of technology companies.
“One of the advantages of building a technology company from Northern Ireland is that geography matters far less than it once did.”
He believes Northern Ireland’s combination of technical talent and a close-knit business community provides strong foundations for start-ups, although founders must think internationally from the outset.
“The domestic market is small, so I think founders here have to look outward from the beginning.”
Focus before funding
Unlike many fast-growing AI businesses, ViveoAI is not actively seeking investment.
Instead, the company is concentrating on customer acquisition, recurring revenue and validating market demand.
“We are not currently undertaking a formal funding round. Our priority at this stage is building the customer base, growing recurring revenue and continuing to demonstrate that ViveoAI solves a genuine commercial problem for healthcare practices.”
While open to discussions with strategic investors, Higgins remains focused on customer adoption rather than fundraising milestones.
“I think there is sometimes a temptation for start-ups to treat raising investment as an achievement in itself.”
“For us, the more important measures are whether customers are willing to use the product, whether it delivers genuine value for them and whether they continue paying for it month after month.”
A practical view of AI’s future
As AI adoption accelerates across business sectors, Higgins believes successful companies will be those that focus on solving practical problems rather than pursuing technology for its own sake.
“My main advice would be to start with a real problem, not with a technology.”
He argues that access to powerful AI models is becoming increasingly widespread, shifting competitive advantage toward industry knowledge and execution.
“The real value lies in combining those technologies with a deep understanding of healthcare workflows, software integrations, data protection and the practical requirements of a busy practice.”
For ViveoAI, that means continuing to refine technology that ensures healthcare practices never miss an opportunity to connect with a patient.
“For me, the clearest test is still a very simple one: are you solving a problem that matters enough that somebody is prepared to pay you to solve it?”
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