Device Addresses Healthcare Language Barrier

Zothecula writes "With over 170 languages spoken in the US alone, medical personnel attending an emergency or working in a busy hospital are no doubt often faced with communication problems when trying to dispense treatment. The Phrazer offers a possible solution to this problem. It is billed as the world's first multilingual communication system, where patients provide medical background information, symptoms or complaints with the help of a virtual onscreen doctor speaking in their own native tongue. This information is then summarized into a medical record compatible with all major EMR systems." All that for only 12 to 18 thousand dollars.

Comments

Re:Only $12~18K?

[MichaelSmith]

With the low cost of modern computer technology, why does this device have to be THAT pricey? Just wondering.

Low volumes. They might put one into every ambulance and ten into each emergency department but thats not the same as selling ipods or iphones by the million.

Funny story: my son was in hospital and I had him psyched up for a blood test. Not easy, I knew it was going to be a battle. Then the nurse wheeled in this big machine with gadgets hung on the outside. It looked like a torture machine from star wars. Of course he freaked out. It was their jazzed portable video player. Meant to distract the kids but it didn't work for us.

In Klingon ....

[PPH]

... the only phrase it knows is "Perhaps today is a good day to die". That keeps the whole health care process pretty simple.

Re:Make English an Official Language?

[Em Adespoton]

Here's an idea: why not make English an official language of the United States. English is already the unofficial language used when doing international business, and it is also the language most often used in science.

If Pakistan can have English as their official language then why not the United States?

Because "official languages" are languages used by government, not languages people are forced to use with ER after severe head trauma. "Sorry, you have to communicate only in English" doesn't sound like something someone dedicated to saving lives is going to want to have to say.

However, this system seems to imply that people whose stronger languages aren't English are literate enough in those other languages to comprehend the feedback in not only triage, but a complete medical diagnostic. I find this a bit of wishful thinking. But if the device can actually pull it off, it's price tag is extremely cheap.

From the perspective of a potential user...

[demonlapin]

I'm a physician, and this kind of stuff is medical shovelware. It will be sold to some poor hospital administrator somewhere who is not medically trained but who thinks that this sounds like a right easy solution to the problem of those non-English-speaking people who keep bumping up the delay times in the ER (a real problem in parts of the country that are just now seeing significant Hispanic influx, like much of the South and Midwest). Meanwhile, the doctors and nurses at the front line will find it ill-suited to what they actually need to accomplish. Flash cards work pretty well for most communication to rule out immediately life-threatening illnesses. After that, you really need a highly qualified translator. Maybe in five years, or a decade, machines will be at that point (although they'll be Google Translate's server farms, not some hand-held piece of junk), but they're not there yet, and it's wasteful and stupid to pretend that they are.

Re:Only $12~18K?

[amnesia_tc]

So cheap they can't even afford to use different vowels in the word "cheep"

Yeah, what's with the hype about House MD anyway?

[KWTm]

You mean by randomly trying every medication they have in the hospital and doing every test procedure they can do he finally stumbles upon it. Which is a little less cool than using a magical cane.

Took the words right out of my mouth.

I hadn't seen the TV show House M.D. till last week. As a physician, I had been seeing patients from time to time comment about this TV show, so finally I got around to watching a few episodes.

I didn't get it at all. This guy is supposed to be some unpersonable irascible doctor who somehow makes up for it by being such a brilliant diagnostician that other doctors are forced to come to him. WTF??? How do you pick up diagnostic clues without having the patient warm up to you so you can understand the details of his/her illness in context? Not to mention that the systematic testing and narrowing in on diagnostic possibilities, that process which on this TV show is supposed to be what makes Dr.House so brilliant, is what all of us doctors do on a daily basis anyway.

If there were a "House, I.T." equivalent, it would feature some supposedly brilliant I.T. tech support guy who refused to touch the computer. His underlings would overcome this deficiency by reading the dmesg logs to him word for word, and then House would come up with some purportedly brilliant insight like "We need to upgrade the video drivers!" at which point all would fall on their knees in fawning worship, chanting "No one else would ever have been able to figure that out!" ... I guess to be on-topic, I should talk about this device. Yes, it's nice to have a portable multilingual multimedia medical dictionary around, but this device is hardly newsworthy. Guess what? My Nokia N900 smartphone running Python, Bash and SSHd is also capable of implementing a system to overcome language barriers! It's called ... making a phone call to an interpreter service! (Also available on non-Linux smartphones, non-smart cellphones, and non-cell phones.)

Day of disillusionment. Might as well go all the way. Okay, Slashdot, tell me about how new Electronic Medical Record policies will cure my patients.

For the xenophobes and small-town residents

[tetromino]

who are wondering why healthcare language barrier is such a major issue in America:

• In major US cities, there are a lot of people who were born overseas and don't known English well. They include foreign tourists (whose grasp of English may be limited to a few dozen phrases from a guidebook); recently arrived immigrants who haven't had time to fully learn the language; and residents of ethnic enclaves who don't know much English because they don't need to — 95% of their daily communication is in another language.
• Human biology being what it is, the people who are the most likely to find themselves in need of medical attention are old. And old people universally suck at languages. They have trouble remembering new vocabulary, they have trouble getting the pronunciation right, and when they get stressed (such as when they are in a hospital due to a sudden medical problem), they tend to forget English words and phrases and have to resort to their native language.
• Even foreigners who know English fairly well may have trouble with medical vocabulary (if you don't believe me, here is a quick illustration: if there is a foreign language that you think you know pretty well, try saying "irregular heartbeat" or "intestinal bleeding" in it). Not to mention the prevalence of false cognates (e.g. "angina" means "chest pains" in English and "tonsillitis" in Russian) and the fact that different countries often use completely different names for the same drug.