Although our world is more interconnected than ever before, one thing continues to hinder our ability to connect and collaborate – language. Languages differ between nations and sometimes within the same country or region. Specific languages have different dialects that sound nothing alike.
Language differences become major hindrances in healthcare and multinational organizations. However, with cloud-based interpretation services like Connected Care by The Language Doctors, language access is being transformed. This streamlined solution revolutionizes language support, even topping existing interpretation methods.
Understanding Language Access and its Challenges
Language access enables individuals with limited language proficiency to understand and access information and services. It ensures effective communication and equal opportunities for all. However, providing language access has traditionally been challenging due to various factors.
Interpreters are hard to come by!
Interpreter scarcity is a persistent challenge in language access, especially in high-demand regions. For example, rural areas may have limited access to qualified interpreters due to a lack of resources.
Additionally, languages of lesser diffusion – those spoken by relatively small numbers of people – often have fewer fluent interpreters. Individuals fluent in these languages also tend to be hard to come by when looking for on-site interpreters. This is often the case with dialects, sign languages, and pidgin languages.
Interpreter shortages result in extended wait times, scheduling challenges, increased costs, and diminished interpretation quality. These factors can significantly impact effective communication and service delivery, particularly in critical fields such as healthcare, legal, and education.
The Connected Care platform resolves these issues by providing qualified interpreters from hundreds of languages just a click away. Instead of searching and booking for on-site interpreters, one must find their language or languages of interest on the site and instantly use the interpreter’s services.
It’s time and money-consuming!
Traditional interpretation methods, such as in-person or phone-based, often require extensive planning, travel, and logistical arrangements. These factors can be time-consuming and costly.
As mentioned earlier, arranging an on-site interpreter involves scheduling, coordination, and their physical presence at the required location. This can be incredibly challenging in remote or underserved areas where interpreters may need to travel long distances. For example, arranging an interpreter to travel to a rural healthcare facility can be time-consuming and costly.
However, the team of Connected Care optimized the scheduling process to make it more efficient and affordable than needing to book an interpreter and pay for their travel expenses. We also made the platform even more affordable when considering pricing plans. There are no pre-required fees, and you only pay for the duration of a call with an interpreter.
This is both cheaper and quicker. Instead of pre-booking the services of an interpreter, the platform allows for fast browsing and choosing of the professional in a matter of minutes.
There simply is not enough variety!
The lack of scalability in on-site interpretation services poses a significant challenge in meeting various sectors’ and organizations’ diverse language support needs.
For instance, the healthcare industry undergoes fluctuations in patient demographics, creating varying demands for language assistance. A hospital in a diverse urban area may require more interpreters than a rural clinic serving a smaller population. For instance, hospitals in New York City have been shown to serve people speaking over 800 languages. And 97% of hospitals in the US have reported serving patients with little to no grasp of the English language every day!
Hospitals simply cannot keep up with the demand by hiring on-site interpreters of all these languages to be available at all times. It simply isn’t feasible. Meanwhile, it is effortless to log onto Connected Care and choose an interpreter fluent in a patient’s language. Interpreters on the platform also specify their level of knowledge of niche topics. This means that users are made aware of the interpreter’s understanding of medical terminology.
A hospital in Manhattan has adopted a similar scheme and has made tablets available on the patients’ bedsides. These tablets are connected to cloud-based interpretation services and are available to patients whenever needed. This streamlined solution is both more efficient and more affordable. Everyone deserves equal access to healthcare, and this is the way to go!
The example of the need for interpreters in healthcare proves that the scalability challenge extends beyond language diversity within sectors. Interpretation services must be adaptable to accommodate specific organizational needs. For example, a call center may require a scalable solution to handle multilingual customer queries, while a legal firm may need interpreters with expertise in specialized legal terminology.
With Connected Care, users pick and choose interpreters familiar with the topics that will be discussed. Cloud-based interpretation services solve all of the obstacles of traditional interpretation methods regarding scalability.
It is not efficient or fast enough!
Inefficiency and miscommunication in interpretation services can have serious consequences, leading to misunderstandings, errors in healthcare diagnoses, and compromised service delivery. In the medical industry, this can harm patient outcomes and safety. This has happened before and continues to happen. In 2014, a Vietnamese-American nine-year-old passed away from a series of events where her parents and the medical staff struggled to communicate efficiently with one another.
Similarly, miscommunication due to ineffective interpretation can lead to misunderstandings, inaccurate legal advice, or wrongful outcomes in legal proceedings.
Moreover, delayed communication adds another layer of complexity. In emergencies, every second counts. Delays in accessing interpretation services can hinder prompt and critical decision-making. This is often an obstacle faced by those seeking urgent medical attention. In these instances, there is not enough time to book and hire an on-site interpreter.
To mitigate these risks, it is essential to have efficient interpretation services that provide accurate and timely communication, ensuring effective collaboration between language speakers and service providers. Technology-driven solutions, such as cloud-based interpretation services, can enhance communication efficiency, reduce miscommunication, and improve service delivery across various sectors.
These exceptional language services can also be accessed promptly, which can sometimes be life-saving!
How can Connected Care be utilized?
In the Healthcare Field
Consider a scenario where a patient is rushed into the emergency department but cannot communicate their symptoms to the medical staff. Their case may require urgent care, but they do not speak the language of the doctors. This is a very common scenario amongst travelers to other countries. In this situation, the patient cannot predict the emergency or have enough time to hire an interpreter. It is also quite possible that nobody in the department speaks the patient’s language.
The healthcare team can quickly connect with a language expert specializing in medical interpretation with Connected Care. The interpreter can effectively communicate the patient’s symptoms, medical history, and any pre-existing conditions to the medical staff and relay to the patient what the team says, ensuring that all relevant information is clear. This guarantees that the patient receives adequate care and help that could save their life.
Even in non-urgent cases, travelers, immigrants, and refugees still need to frequent doctors’ offices regardless of whether they are fluent in the language of the country they are in or not. Usually, especially with travelers, they do not properly grasp the language. Thus, they cannot receive adequate care or understand the advice they get.
These examples remind us of how common it is to have a situation where patients and providers do not speak the same language, at least not at a level required to achieve appropriate communication in a healthcare setting. Most hospitals and clinics worldwide do not have on-site interpreters available at all times, especially not in hundreds of languages. And while pre-booking and arranging for an on-site interpreter is still an option, it is a hassle, costlier, and not always possible, depending on your location, your language, and the urgency of your situation.
Connected Care provides an instant, reliable, and affordable option, with hundreds of languages and professionals well-versed in medical terminology and topics. Besides, it is also vital in providing quality care to diverse patient populations by facilitating impeccable language support.
In the Legal Field
In the legal field, accurate interpretation is essential to ensure that all parties involved clearly understand the information and arguments presented. Connected Care recognizes the critical importance of precise interpretation and connects legal professionals with interpreters specializing in legal jargon and terminology.
Hearings may involve defendants who either do not speak the language of the country or do not have a good-enough grasp of it. Another example is calling on a witness in a similar situation regarding their language proficiency.
However, one of the most common uses of Connected Care in the legal field is in consultations and meetings. Consultations between attorneys and clients form the backbone of their trust and strengthen their cases. Without cloud-based interpretation services, attorneys and clients who do not speak the same language cannot communicate important information and details. This may be detrimental to their chances of winning the case.
Meetings between legal teams of different countries also use Connected Care to ensure that the information they are relaying to one another is accurate.
It is also important to note that Connected Care takes client confidentiality seriously. The information relayed during interpreting sessions are legally protected.
In the Corporate World
Effective communication is crucial for successful negotiations, employee training, and overall business operations in the corporate world. However, language barriers can often impede this process. Connected Care recognizes the challenges businesses face in this regard and offers corporate clients access to interpreters experienced in a similar environment.
From large international corporations to small local businesses and everything in between, nearly every business is either importing from or exporting to another country.
Sometimes businesses choose to import their supplies from other countries when they get the opportunity to get cheaper materials. And in other times, companies decide to expand their operations and open branches beyond the borders of where they are based, or they choose to deliver abroad.
The choice will involve communicating with individuals from different countries and having business meetings with them. Hiring reliable interpreters on cloud-based interpreting services is your best choice to ensure that the meetings go as smoothly as possible and that you get the best outcome.
In Challenging Environments
In relation to the previous point, some businesses face the unique challenge of operating in remote or unsafe locations where finding interpreters in person can be difficult or costly. Connected Care recognizes these logistical barriers and offers a solution by enabling these corporations to connect with interpreters through video calls. This innovative feature allows them to overcome obstacles from challenging environments and ensures smooth communication regardless of location and environment.
Unsafe environments include remote mining areas, regions with political instability or active war, and regions after natural disasters. These few examples out of many highlight the need for online effective interpretation between individuals on-site without the need of endangering another person or even handling the costs and responsibility for their travel to these areas. The platform also offers access to interpreters of hundreds of languages, making communication effective regardless of all the languages possible.
Eliminate language-related hurdles from your life today!
Cloud-based interpretation services are revolutionizing language access and breaking down linguistic barriers in various settings. Organizations like The Language Doctors are at the forefront of leveraging cloud technology to enable effective communication across different sectors. You can see it with the introduction of the exceptional language services of Connected Care. With a user-friendly application, real-time interpretation, and a wide range of languages supported, cloud-based interpretation services are utilized in healthcare, legal, and educational fields, multinational organizations, and many other sectors.
We promote inclusivity, understanding, and collaboration in our interconnected world by embracing these advancements. Cloud-based interpretation represents the future of language access, providing a scalable, efficient, and cost-effective solution for overcoming language hurdles, fostering effective communication across diverse populations, and providing equal rights and access to people in healthcare, legal, and educational settings.
Embrace cloud-based interpretation services to make your life and the lives of those around you easier! Visit the Connected Care platform today: https://cc.thelanguagedoctors.org/
