Source: Medicospeaker
Sponsored • Foreign patients
App helps to break language barrier
Language difficulties become even greater when a patient is foreign and in need of medical care. To improve communication between international patients and medical staff, a new translation app – Medicospeaker – is undergoing its first in-hospital tests at Muenster University Hospital (UKM) in Germany.
The system aims to translate dynamic conversation processes, explained Lukas Fortmeier, CEO of Medicospeaker who, as a trained nurse, is clearly familiar with language barriers in care giving. During the app’s development, phrases from everyday hospital life were linked to conversation processes in collaboration with medical staff and translated into 15 flexibly selectable languages.
An innovative and promising opportunity to simplify communication between our patients and our medical staff at any time and without interpreters
Vincent Hofbauer
The conversations depict everyday nursing processes according to Juchli's scientific model.
Nurses can thus hold admission interviews with a patient in his/her own language, as well as use the app in various care situations and communicate quickly and specifically in emergencies. Additionally, the patient can communicate different needs at any time, the manufacturer pointed out. ‘We expect the application in everyday clinical use at the UKM to provide us with important empirical values that will help us further develop the app,’ Fortmeier said.
Vincent Hofbauer MD, who heads the International Patient Management Unit at Muenster, added that the app ‘offers an innovative and promising opportunity to simplify communication between our patients and our medical staff at any time and without interpreters.’ Thereby lies the financial saving: interpreters can become expensive and are not readily available.
The application is available in app stores for Android and iOS.
In addition to the language app, the producer, Medicosolution, also bundles innovative solutions for digital healthcare. Added to its portfolio are Asset Tracking, a system to avoid physically searching for assets and over-provisioning of equipment; Vital Tracking to monitor vital signs and localisation of patients, and Indoor Navigation.
Medicospeaker is at MEDICA:
11.11.2018
