In hospital, language barriers vanish with IP telephony
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Healing without being able to fully understand its patient mother tongue is kind of hard. (No, I told you twice, doctor. It’s not a headache, it’s a screw in my brain.) But in three California hospitals, the language barrier is evolving.
The Health Care Interpreter Network connects doctors and patients with Spanish-language interpreters in a call center, or to people with jobs elsewhere in the hospital for less-common languages. Using consoles at nursing stations, doctors connect with an interpreter who speaks English and the language of the patient. Calls are typically answered in less than five minutes, and most are connected within 40 seconds. They’re prioritized so that emergency situations jump to the top of the queue.
South-East Asian communities are also welcomed by the VoIP telephone system which currently routes 3,000 calls a month. This is the kind of applications VoIP can more and more easily handle. And besides this situation, for individuals, there are some Y! Messenger and Skype plugins that fit the same job. For free.
Aug 14, 2006 | By Nuno
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