Translator App Will Help Break Language Barrier

By Christine Kern, contributing writer

Canopy Translator will aid in communication and treatment process.

The Canopy Translator app, first revealed in 2013 at the ACEP innovatED conference, is the first mobile app that allows providers to access a library of routine medical terminology in any of 150 languages, all at the touch of a button.

Canopy App’s CEO, Jerrit Tan, explains, “We really want to help emergency room physicians re-imagine what is possible in terms of language assistance. The way things work now is just not working, so we need to show a complete new way of working with patients who do not speak English. IT’s an uphill battle to change anything in healthcare, but we think it’s a really important battle.”

The app also contains a Telephone Interpreter Call Button, which allows users to call an interpreter directly from the app wing mobile or WiFi signals, allowing physicians to hold more complex conversations about symptoms or treatment.

In an interview with the American College of Cardiologists (ACC), Tan explained the idea for the app came from his own experiences when he used to stay home from school as a teenager to accompany friends and family to doctor appointments to serve as a translator. “All my grandparents and uncles and aunts only spoke Chinese,” Tan told Modern Healthcare. “I saw how hard it was for people to get access to healthcare.”

According to Tan, “The current ways of getting language interpreters are time consuming and inefficient as best, and nonexistent at worse. While most major hospitals have in-person interpreters or telephone interpreters, healthcare providers do not like using them because they are difficult to use. This leads to poor patient care, and increases risks for the healthcare systems. We know it has to start with the healthcare provider, so our goal is to make language translation services easier to use for them and to keep costs down for the healthcare system.

“We see this as the future of language translation and interpretation for healthcare – use a scalable library of translated medical content and when doing the routine things, and call an interpreter with ease if the situation becomes more complex or sensitive.”

In the six months since the launch of the translation app, 40,000 physicians, nurses, physician assistants, medical students, and nursing students have begun using it. The company has also begun pilot projects with organizations like the Visiting Nurse Services of New to demonstrate that “Canopy can hit the trifecta of health IT: improve patient care, improve patient and provider satisfaction, and lower costs.”

Tan outlined some of the uses of the app to date, including:

• Medical residents at New York Presbyterian Hospital are using the app for rounds with post-op patients.
• Medical students traveling to Haiti to run a free clinic in rural areas are using Canopy's Haitian Creole section to communicate.
• Nurses at the Boston Marathon used Canopy to communicate with the thousands of foreign competitors in the race.
• Cardiology fellows use Canopy with patients in one of New York Presbyterian Hospital's outpatient cardiology clinics.