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Medical Translator Used Successfully
saskboy writes "Translations of medical questions posed by doctors to their patients were provided by a new Canadian designed computer called MedBridge. "Cantonese, Mandarin, Japanese, Portuguese, French, and Russian," are some of the languages the MedBridge can work with. CBC reports, "If a patient is deaf, the system can also translate into American Sign Language using video. The MedBridge system is already in use at hospitals in New York, Toronto and Halifax." Pretranslated questions are stored in the computer and the doctor chooses from the list of questions to ask. It's not quite a Universal Translator, but it should improve doctor-patient communication."
The article mentions dialects as a potential roadblock. There is no mention of how this system would allow for the patient to ask questions. That is another pretty big hurdle.
There. I beat you to it!
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I don't understand where this would be useful. In a clinic dealing with patients who don't speak English as a first language, yes, but at the practice I go to they already have Chinese/English speaking doctors, as well as several others who are multilingual, which works fine.
It looks useful on paper, but in reality I think it will just be an extra expense for very little return.
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Would it not be easier to translate the spoken words into text?
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When do we get the machine that can read a doctor's handwriting?
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No WoW speak? Its the only language some idiots know! U GOT PWNED HEALZ INC
this translator
Your dog wants a cure for cancer now.
Turns out the patient's hovercraft was full of eels.
Just because a patient can understand your words doesn't mean that they know what you're asking about. Some people speak English and still manage to get something very different out of a conversation than what was said, and if the patient is simply answering questions to please the doctor then it doesn't matter what language it's in. Cultural competency is as important as language, maybe more, and we've all seen what happens when literal translations go awry (the Clairol "mist stick" comes to mind). And given that many of the patient contact notes are in fact legal documents, I'd rather use human translators that I know can get the job done.
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If the patient only speaks Mandarin and the doctor only speaks english, what translates the patients response? This system is not useful if the response cannot be understood. Perhaps all the questions are just yes/no answers...
Only needs to handle "Do you have any insurance?" and a positve response
This reminds me a little of a system that I saw, when I was working in the E.D. in a local hospital a while back.
They had a live translation service that worked through a "red phone" (it wasn't really red, but it was a dedicated, pick-up-to-talk phone) that connected to a bank of live translators. You picked up the phone and entered codes for what languages you wanted it to translate to and from, say English to Catalan, and it would route you to an operator that could do that translation. Then the patient picked up the other handset, or you put it on speaker, and away you went. I assume the hospital got a fat bill at the end of the month for every use. I always thought this was a pretty slick system, because the translators could be anywhere. I don't know how they handled it in reality, but I had visions of operators sitting around their kitchens or in small callcenters worldwide, with the computer routing them calls when ones in languages whenever they were available.
Granted, I never saw anyone actually use this system, so I can't vouch for it in practice. But conceptually it struck me as being pretty cool.
The point that TFA makes about colloquialisms is right on, however. Even a human translator doesn't take this all out. A good story is one I heard from an EMT friend of mine. He got called to the scene of an older person who had lost consciousness and was unresponsive. When there, he tried to get a history from the wife: she kept saying "He fell out! He just fell out!" And nobody had any idea what she meant. Fell out of where? Of a window? Of a car? Of his chair? Was there a possible head injury? The possibilities were endless.
Turns out, "falling out" is apparently a direct translation of the Quebecois term for "passing out" or "fainting." The lady was just stating the obvious -- the guy had passed out. To the woman, it made perfect sense, but to the EMTs, it didn't. And this was with two people, in person, speaking the same language, with one native speaker and one very competent second-language speaker. Even with human translators, unless you selected them not only for languages, but also for dialect and regionalisms, I could see this being a big problem. (And potentially a lot more serious than my example.) With a machine, the number of problems must skyrocket.
That said, I still think it's a neat development, and I'm sure it'll be an asset for hospitals in areas where the staff can't keep up with the diverse and ever-changing language requirements of their patients.
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saskboy écrit des "traductions des questions médicales posées par des médecins à leurs patients ont été fournis par un nouvel ordinateur conçu canadien appelé MedBridge. "cantonaises, mandarine, Japonais, Portugais, Français, et Russe," sont certaines des langues que le MedBridge peut fonctionner avec. CBC rapporte, "si un patient est sourd, le système peut également traduire en langue américaine de signe à l'aide de la vidéo. Le système de MedBridge est déjà en service aux hôpitaux à New York, à Toronto et à Halifax." Des questions de Pretranslated sont stockées dans l'ordinateur et le docteur choisit de la liste de questions de demander. Ce n'est pas tout à fait un traducteur universel, mais il devrait améliorer la communication de docteur-patient."
What happened to those expert systems that seemed so promising in the 70s and 80s? I don't believe a doctor can weigh up the range of symptoms that a patient might have, and the even bigger range of symptoms that a patient doesn't have, more reliably than a machine, in order to make an assessment of the probability of the patient having any particular disease. MYCIN is one that comes to mind but there were others. I was under the impression that they had performed better than doctors in tests.
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Doctors try to spend as little time as possible in a patient's room... especially the PCPs. I wonder how well the interface is designed for a doctor to 'choose' from a list of questions.. Probably the doctor can have a list of pre-prepared set of questions that deals with a particular problem / disease... Although this can only work for patients with 'simple' problems... A doctor who can speak the native tongue is still the best, though..
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From the article:
which also allows the patients to see the words on the screen in their own language.
If a patient is deaf, the system can also translate into American Sign Language using video.
What's the point of video sign language? You could just read the words off the screen... seems a trifle pointless.
And does this system just show text, or can it actually pronounce it? (This could be an issue in countries where the literacy rate isn't too high, if say US doctors are doing disaster relief.)
CAN it convert medical mumbo-jumbo into english?
saskboy it writes the translations of medical interpellations that become from the doctors in his patients, it has been provided from that is arrested computer canadian the call new MedBridge. "cantonaises, French mandarin, Japaneses, Portugeses, and that is Russian, are of course the box of maintainance MedBridge of languages with which it works. CBC is placed in the submission of reports, if one patient is hearing impaired, can the system also in in the American language of sample that uses the video translates. The system MedBridge is already in the service in the hospitals in the New York, Toronto and Halifax. The interpellations Pretranslated are stored in in the computer and the doctor choose the enumeration of interpellations in order to it asks. He is not completely no world translator, but that the communication of need the improvement.
While I think this is very useful, I think that there are quite a few simplier solutions out there. I have for many years kept many print outs in different languages of common medical questions and terms to work with patients. The other part is that having someone speak the language is still much more effective, yes there are plenty of languages that present at a hospital that it is not feesible to have a translator for, but at the same time someone that knows their language might also have a better understanding of their culture and their perceptions of medicine.
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I've also been an Anglophone living in rural Quebec using local medical facilities, where the medical staff was not at all comfortable working in English (and please not the old canard they were doing it for effect, I never ran into that in eight years. Jerks screeching "English!" get ignored, not the rest of us.)
Point is that there is a huge need for medical translation, not just in major urban hospitals but also in rural clinics. And not just from English to Ubbadubba but also in reverse.
I can't imagine technology being able to replace the nuances of a trained translator and caregivers working together, in person, with a patient and families, picking up nuances and culturally idiomatic body language. However this is better then requiring care and being unable to communicate at all, or trying to pantomime medical issues.
For timers & places where there isn't a translator avialable something like this is fantastic. Indeed I'd love to see it extended with graphics, offering short animated video clips describing common issues & procedures for patients unfamilier with local medical practices.
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I can clearly see the benefit of such device for clinicians who practice in metropolitan areas (like NYC). My university hospital is situated in a highly hispanic concentrated area (Washington Heights) and there is always a requirement for a spanish speaking nurse on the floor. The university also gives free language tutorials for medical students. Hell I have seen several physicians putting language skills on top of their resume to get a job the our hospital.
I havent RTFA, but the last I heard (a week ago frm my machine learning prof) that speech recognition systems are only 50% good and it seems to me that such a device in a clinical setting can prove disastrous if it makes some mistakes !
Imagine some scenarios
Patient says: I feel blah blah blah... (of course in some different language)
Doctor hears: I feel like having sex with you
Patient says: No..blah no.. no.. blah
Doctor hears: aah yES.. YES.. right there.. YES aah YES..
Ok, I can understand the use for this. But, how is he doctor going to get a reply to the question? I mean if doctor speaks langauge A and patient language B, how is the patient going to rpely in a way the doctor can understand?
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i know i run in to this occasionally. i speak conversational Japanese, but i grew up primarily in the US, and have my medical degree in the US. i can talk about the weather without a problem, but if i try to describe anatomy or a medical condition, i'm stuck. actually, part of my job as a physician for regular english speakers is to translate Medical terms to everyday english. i find that that can clear up alot of anxiety for everyone.
a medical translater must not only translate the exact word, but must sometimes simplify the words so that the average person will understand them.
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I find it difficult to believe some of the comments here...
How many people here have actually been to a hospital overseas, where the odds of someone speaking your language well enough for you to understand are quite slim, or perhaps in a country where your mastery of the language is questionable at best? I have, and let me tell you - it's no fun. The usual jumpiness that accompanies any trip to the hospital is magnified about 10 fold. I would have loved to have access to a device like this one. It's not perfect, but it really would've put my mind at ease, which would have helped the whole process move along more smoothly.
It's gold, says "Oh dear, oh dear" a lot, and is a model Dr-C3PO.
Why don't we all just learn esperanto ? :-P
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Mike Kilo Foxtrot is one that comes to mind...
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Amputate his left leg.
*splotch*
I said left !
*splotch*
I said leg! !
Dr.: And the bill comes out to.....
Transl: All your base...
However, I can see this being useful for newly landed immigrants or people visiting the country.
MKF
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
That sounds like just a point-and-click set of canned questions and multiple choice responses. There are better things.
Speech-to-speech translators and universal dictionaries are getting pretty good these days. These guys make one.
I live in Halifax, we're a fairly large tourist city, and I can definately see where this helps for us. We can't always guarantee that we have medical staff that can speak most languages known to man, so a computer program may offer some insight into diagnosos of the patient.
Babelfish did this one entirely for me: Original: "Did you say you wanted to have your kidney removed?" Translated to Chinese (and back): "You said you thought the edible your kidney is removen?"
There had to be SOME Star Trek fans working on the project somewhere.
-- ac at work
I asked one veteran E.R. doc about the language situation in hospitals and he said it just wasn't that big a deal because often times the whole family would show up in the E.R., and someone in the bunch would be the terp. But that's just one data point.
When I was taking ASL courses, our teacher shared her own story about that. Due to vagaraies of genetics and the like, both she and her grandmother were deaf and had therefore learned sign language. The rest of the family, for whatever reason, had not. The grandmother was in the hospital, being treated, and they found that her condition was much more serious than they had taught. And so our teacher, at the age of 11, got to tell her grandmother that she was going to die. *shiver* Heck of a thing to do to a kid.
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Looks like a nice little toy. It'll certainly help smaller hospitals and clinics where they may not have a multilingual staff. Using pre-selected sentences allows for a small amount of "cultural competency" in the translation since I doubt each translation is 100% literal. It's still no substitute for a multilingual and culturally aware medical staff, however. For those who are curious about this cultural competency thing....read "The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down", by Anne Fadiman to see how more than just language barriers can separate doctors and patients.
He who would be a man, must be a nonconformist. -- Emerson
This device will become very useful as hundreds of thousands of Americans go abroad to get health care needs met. The Medical Industry in the USA is in meltdown from greed and stupidity. Millions of people have no health care access at all and tens of millions of working-people (like you and me) have only limited access to medicial care.
To meet their needs for major surgery and so forth, they will be going to other countries with more rational health care services. Some doctors in these places will be bilingual, but many of them and most of the support staff will not be.
So yes, this machine will be very useful for Americans. Especially the large group of people who were born between 1945 and 1965 who will be at their greatest medical need stage at the same time that the American medical industry collapses.
...stopped them.
who do you sue if an expert system advises something that has an adverse event?
... and other unrestricted automated translators.
Restricting the syntax to the domain of medical terms makes the job a whole lot easier, and would eliminate oodles of ambiguities.
I helped design a similar web based system a couple of years ago. See it at http://www.triagetranslator.com/.
Free Scotland!
You know, I can see instances where a machine like this could be useful. Not as useful as a translator on staff, or a translation service that someone else mentioned in a previous post.
It is no wonder though, with all the technology being pushed into the medical field, how expensive health insurance has gotten. New technology like this sounds great, but is never around long enough to turn a profit, and is outdated within a week. It is one of those cases where there may be an advantage to technological growth slowing down. Leave something for our kids and our kids kids to be innovative about, not just picking up the mess of an infrastructure we are leaving them.
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Yah, down here in the rural South of the USA, the phrase is "done fell out". It is so commonly accepted that it is an unoffical radio code (DFO). We also have cases where grandma gets "the vapors" - meaning anything from "she fainted" to "she has bad gas" to "she's got gas gangrene in her diabetic feet".
And don't get me started on "high blood". High blood WHAT? Pressure, sugar, alcohol, ARRRGGH . . .
Rural North Florida Paramedic (volunteer)
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These translators are not going to ever produce translations at quality anywhere human translations until they can properly account for context. The best way to do this as I see it is through knowledge representation via a neural network (i.e., adaptive resonance theory).
> "Cantonese, Mandarin, Japanese, Portuguese, French, and Russian," are some of the languages the MedBridge can work with
Wow...they actually forgot english?
Any Doctor that buys this obviously doesn't care about the answer?! er...babel fish and plenty of exercise.