One has stood out.
Medibabble is a real-time medical translation app and is now available for FREE. It was created by two innovative UCSF medical school graduates, Dr. Alex Blau and Dr. Brad Cohn. This app contains an extensive preset list of history questions and physical exam commands. When you click on a sentence, the app will translate and speak the sentence in one of 5 languages (Spanish, Cantonese, Mandarin, Russian, and Haitian Creole).
Download MediBabble (takes you to iTunes link)
I find most of these translation programs futile. It doesn't matter if I can ask the question if I can't understand their answer. Is there an app that will translate their answer?
ReplyDeleteHow do you use this if you don't understand the answer?
Good question. The app primarily asks yes/no questions, which is not idea. But it's better than nothing.
ReplyDeleteBy, far a real-time actual translator is best. The 2 times I've used this thus far was when I had hung up with the live phone-translator and then I wanted to go back to do a followup physical exam. The Medibabble has some physical exam commands (eg. sit up, take a deep breath, etc).
Interestingly Google Translate is working on a real-time translator tool -- "Conversation Mode". If you have an Android, you might test it out. Only for English-Spanish translations for now and meant for conversational sentences (not a medically-focused app). It's getting good reviews.
In response to the commenter concerned with the ability understand patient responses: In creating MediBabble, we have attempted to circumvent this issue by phrasing all questions such that they elicit closed-ended responses, whereby patients can either respond in yes/no format, via gestural responses, or in certain cases by interacting with the device (e.g. date selection). Introductory phrases describe this limitation to the patient, and test cases have shown this approach to be both practical and acceptable to patients. While this form of communication is inherently limited, our intention is not for MediBabble to replace live interpretation, but to facilitate high-yield, targeted history-taking in circumstances where interpretation is not immediately available.
ReplyDeleteJust downloaded MediBabble and haven't tried it yet, but I have taken Google Translate for a spin and it's great. It can take you from English to several languages (fewer in the opposite direction) and can both speak your translation or display it in large type, even in Cyrillic, Arabic, Kanji, etc. There's obviously still work to be done, but that's kind of the point. Imagine describing this app to someone 5 years ago. Now picture where we'll be in another 5.
ReplyDeleteHi John: I agree, Google Translate and MediBabble are revolutionizing real-time translation. What's that movie where they have a Universal Translator that you can plug in your ear and everything just is translated automatically for you? Maybe that's where we'll be in 5 years!
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