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Updates below The Affordable Care Act has increased the number of patients in the healthcare system, including non-English speakers. The non-English speaking patient population in the U.S. accounts for an estimated 30 million people. Navigating our health system is challenging enough for native speakers but what about for those for whom English isn’t their first language? It’s an issue not only for patients and their families, but also for people who serve in critical roles such as care givers and other medical support staff.
Here are some of the innovative approaches companies are taking to close the language barriers in healthcare and improve communication between patients and medical staff.
Update Canopy Apps With the support of an NIH Small Business Innovation Research grant, New York-based Canopy Apps developed a multilingual medical translator platform to explain complex medical concepts to non-English speaking patients. In a phone interview Raj Jhaveri, the vice president of business development, told MedCity News that it will include 20 languages. It currently covers four medical specialties, including internal medicine, emergency medicine, OB/GYN and surgery. “Specialties that involved more patient interaction than the other are scheduled to be added by the end of the year.”
It includes phrases for explaining what the physician will do to perform a procedure but doctors can also provides live translators. Since its beta program ended in February, providers from more than 1,500 institutions, such as Penn Medicine, New York Presbyterian and Duke Medicine, have adopted the platform. Medical associations have helped expand its customer base, such as the American College of Emergency Physicians and the American Medical Women’s Association.
“Patients often have no clue what’s going on, so having to explain something as complex as an MRI, patients can get lost in the translation,” said Jhaveri. “Having a system like ours going from admission to discharge helps physicians communicate information to patients.”
Jhaveri said the company will expand its platform for other languages. Although it’s a rare dialect, has been getting a lot of requests for a version in Hmong.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
Some of the translation apps he has seen are a better fit for the travel industry than in a hospital, particularly when it comes to the complexities of translating medical terminology in say, Somali or Haitian Creole. Others can be cumbersome and inefficient.
One of the most popular options for dealing with the language barrier challenge has been the use of icons. Health IT companies have applied this approach with different uses in mind.
eCaring developed a home health care monitoring platform to help seniors stay at home longer as part of the aging in place trend. Its founder and CEO Robert Herzog designed the platform for caregivers for whom English is their second language. It uses icons to convey the daily activities of their patients from eating and bed rest to using the toilet and exercise as well as their mood on a daily basis. That information can be used not only to help keep loved ones informed of their wellbeing but also for medical staff to assess patients’ progress and any setbacks. It can also be used to assess potential side effects of drugs and effectiveness of care plans. It includes versions in Russian, Spanish, Chinese, and Filipino, among other languages.
StarlingHealth uses visual cues to make it easier for patients and medical staff to communicate. Its platform shows patients’ request history, lead time, and commonly requested items. Providers can keep patients informed of each request’s status, driving better engagement and setting realistic expectations. It addresses one way to improve patient engagement by making it easier for patients and medical staff to make themselves understood and reduce the likelihood of readmission.
Some of the solutions being developed are also intended for patients whose verbal skills are reduced due to the impact of a stroke, a physical or neurological condition or surgery.
VerbalCare also takes the icon route, but their tools are aimed at patients, specifically at the hospital bedside. Although VerbalCare’s tool was developed for stroke patients with aphasia, it has broader applications too. A patient uses its customized set of icons to transmit messages to nurses such as, “I’m in pain” or “I can’t breathe.” Nurses receive their patients messages in real-time on a mobile device. It helps nurses delegate non-emergency tasks to nursing assistants and leaves nurses more time to address more serious problems.
Telemedicine offers another way to close language barriers. The development of Skype Translator offered a cool preview of how telemedicine could leap over that barrier. It does near real-time audio translation between two people who are speaking different languages by combining Skype voice and IM technologies with Microsoft Translator and network-based speech recognition. Another company that could impact the telemedicine market is Mobile Video Remote Interpretation. It allows agencies to provide remote video interpreters via iPads and iPhones without having to make a big investment in technology or specialized tools.
