Translation app ready for use in Antwerp hospitals
Ziekenhuis Netwerk Antwerpen (ZNA) is the first hospital in the Benelux (Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg) to have developed an app for contacts with foreign-language and deaf patients. Every year, ZNA has more than 200.000 contacts with non-Dutch-speaking patients. More than 10.000 of these are acute interventions by so-called 'intercultural mediators'.
"Nurses who have to ask or explain something using their hands and feet are a daily phenomenon in hospitals", says Director of Patient Care Wim Van de Waeter. "This language barrier has long been an issue in healthcare. The new Global Talk care app should do something about that."
The app contains some 350 frequently asked questions, answers and instructions on 28 medical topics in eleven languages. This way, healthcare providers can enter into a dialogue with the patient day and night, without the intervention of an interpreter. The app also allows an internal or external interpreter to be contacted digitally.
"Finding a (sign) interpreter during the weekend or in the evening is not easy", explains Van de Waeter. "Moreover, interpreters are very expensive. With this language app, digital help is always and immediately available. This is important because in the medical sector we have no room for mistranslations."
"Finding a (sign) interpreter during the weekend or in the evening is not easy. Moreover, interpreters are very expensive. With this language app, digital help is always and immediately available."
The medical topics in the app, such as maternity or emergency, were selected by doctors and nurses within ZNA. Professional interpreters then translated and recorded the texts. This is very different from how other translation software works: the app can also read out instructions and use illustrations to show what something is about.
"For example, the app can communicate the degree of dilation for a pregnant woman", says Van de Waeter. "We can also indicate that we are going to put a syringe in someone, ask what allergy someone has or how many beers someone has drunk."
All of this is available in Berber, Arabic, Turkish, Russian, Farsi, Spanish, Bulgarian, French, Polish and Romanian. Ukrainian will soon be added. The exchanged data and information are not stored. The app also works offline and is therefore fully GDPR-proof.
A Dutch company - Global Talk - developed the application. Global Talk is an organisation with 1.600 interpreters. Soon, the company will also launch a commercial version of the app. Other care institutions in Flanders will then also be able to use the app.
(BRV)
Photo shows the ZNA (Antwerp Network Hospital) translation app for smartphones. © BELGA PHOTO HAND OUT ZNA