ElevenLabs Text-to-Speech for Clinical Projects

Quick-start skill for OpenClaw Clinical Hackathon participants. Use ElevenLabs TTS for patient-facing voice: instructions, reminders, discharge info, and accessible content.

Prerequisites

ELEVENLABS_API_KEY — Set in environment or in ~/.openclaw/openclaw.json under skills.entries.elevenlabs.apiKey (or env.ELEVENLABS_API_KEY).
Get a key at ElevenLabs (free tier available).

When to Use This Skill

Patient discharge or aftercare instructions (spoken).
Medication or appointment reminders.
Multilingual health messages (e.g. 30+ languages).
Accessibility: turning written clinical text into clear speech.
Long-form content (e.g. patient education) with natural, empathetic tone.

How to Use

Ensure the TTS tool is available
If your OpenClaw setup has a text-to-speech tool (e.g. tts_text_to_speech or similar), use it with ElevenLabs as the provider. The tool will use ELEVENLABS_API_KEY when configured for ElevenLabs.
When the user asks for spoken output
- Prefer short, clear sentences for instructions and reminders.
- For medical terms, use ElevenLabs’ pronunciation controls or a pronunciation dictionary if available to improve accuracy.
- Suggest a calm, professional voice for clinical content.
If calling the API directly
- Endpoint: POST https://api.elevenlabs.io/v1/text-to-speech/{voice_id}
- Headers: xi-api-key: <ELEVENLABS_API_KEY>, Content-Type: application/json
- Body: {"text": "<content>", "model_id": "eleven_multilingual_v2"} (or eleven_flash_v2_5 for low latency).
- Prefer eleven_multilingual_v2 for non-English or mixed-language clinical text.

Best Practices for Clinical TTS

Tone: Use a warm, clear, professional voice; avoid overly casual or dramatic tones.
Chunking: Break long text into short paragraphs or bullets to improve clarity and pacing.
Language: Set the correct language (or use a multilingual model) for the patient’s preferred language.
Sensitive content: Do not include PHI or other sensitive data in log messages or external calls; keep API usage consistent with your security and compliance setup.

Quick Reference

| Use case | Suggestion | |-----------------------|--------------------------------------------------| | Short reminders | eleven_flash_v2_5 for speed | | Long-form / multilingual | eleven_multilingual_v2 | | Medical terminology | Use pronunciation hints or dictionary if supported |

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