[HN Gopher] Doctors who use Google Translate to talk to patients...
___________________________________________________________________
Doctors who use Google Translate to talk to patients want a better
option
Author : grogu88
Score : 47 points
Date : 2022-03-17 18:07 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.statnews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.statnews.com)
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| This article says they used Google Translate for "Taiwanese to
| English, English to Taiwanese", but Google Translate doesn't list
| 'Taiwanese' as a language.
|
| It _does_ list 'Chinese (Traditional)' and I guess that's what
| they were using.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Fun fact: Disney movies get separate dubs for Taiwan and for
| mainland China.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| I'm going to try this next time my son watches a Disney
| movie, and see if he notices.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| If he's already familiar with the movie, he's pretty
| certain to notice if you switch the version. The song
| lyrics are completely different.
|
| I tend to feel that the Taiwan lyrics are better, but I'm
| not a native or even fluent speaker. I'd be interested in
| native opinions.
| johndfsgdgdfg wrote:
| In US ALL doctors have to be trained in Spanish so that they can
| serve the hispanic population. This type of systemic racism
| against hispanics shouldn't be tolerated and we need put an end
| to it.
| hohoemi8 wrote:
| I don't know anything about the person in the article but if you
| still don't speak the language X years after immigrating to a
| country you have no one but yourself to blame for these kinds of
| situations.
| freedomben wrote:
| I can't imagine being a patient in pain trying to communicate
| that to a doctor who didn't speak the same language, especially
| when the pain was due to a different issue (as the article
| describes).
|
| The pendulum has fully swung from "pain is a vital sign" to "suck
| it up" and "anyone who complains about pain is a liar or a drug
| seeker unless they're older than 65 or have a visible external
| wound."[1] It's difficult even when you speak the same language.
| I'm sure it's nearly impossible when you don't.
|
| [1]: https://rehabs.com/pro-talk/how-to-get-labeled-a-pill-
| seeker...
| pseingatl wrote:
| A patient who is mentally challenged or who is unconscious may
| or won't have the vocabulary that would permit a physician to
| take a history.
|
| Veterinarians deal with this daily as well.
|
| In both cases, there are professional protocols to deal with
| the situation.
| atdrummond wrote:
| It has become an absolute joke. I have had 6 surgeries for
| Crohns, a back surgery due to wear and tear from high level
| athletics, and am a long term sufferer of an aggressive
| leukaemia. Despite using opioids responsibly for over a decade,
| I am regarded as nothing more than a drug seeking pest the very
| few times I have actively sought pain relief during in-patient
| hospital stays. Prior to being dropped entirely from my
| Oxycodone IR script (30 10mg pills a month, truly not a large
| amount) without any warning due to my pain doctor finally
| simply giving up on the system, I had never asked for an
| increase in a dose ever - despite still having plenty of
| untreated pain.
|
| Legitimate chronic pain patients are being abused at this point
| in order to save face for the broken, rent-seeking
| pharmaceutical system that enabled the prescription opioid
| 'crisis' in the first place.
| BaronVonSteuben wrote:
| Yep, absolutely. My doctor of 10+ years recently retired,
| leaving me in search of a new doc. I've been managing my pain
| for 15+ years just fine with 10mg Hydrocodone. In 15 years I
| only once asked to increase the dose, and it was only from
| two pills per day to three to help me get through the
| afternoon/evening better. A minuscule dose.
|
| After doing "new patient" appointments (which by the way were
| like $200 to $300 _each_ ) and not having a doc willing to
| take me on as a patient unless I dropped the opioids, and
| making several calls (who refused to tell me over the phone
| whether the doctor was even _open_ to controlled substances
| without that $300 "new patient" appointment) I gave up.
| Since coming off the opioids my quality of life has plunged.
| I struggle with depression and thoughts of suicide now,
| especially when I'm unable to leave the house or my bed. I
| went from stable and productive and what doctors used to say
| is the model patient, to being miserable. Every doc has
| offered to give me additional antidepressants or crank up the
| doses of those, but none are willing to treat the pain that
| is exacerbating it.
|
| I absolutely believe that what the medical establishment is
| doing to people like us (withholding treatment that we know
| works) is cruel and borders on torture. It is the epitome of
| taking macro-level stats and explanations and applying them
| broadly on the micro-level, regardless of the harm caused.
|
| I believe Hippocrates would be rolling over in his grave to
| hear that these people took an oath to "do no harm."
|
| For the record. I mostly don't blame the doctors. They are
| protecting their medical licenses, which the DEA and FDA have
| proven they are willing to revoke over the slightest anomaly.
| When the feds started throwing pain specialists in federal
| prison because some tiny percent of their patients were
| abusers, it really drove home that individual doctors are not
| allowed to think anymore. You implement government policy, or
| you risk financial ruin and even jail time. I don't blame
| them for being cowards. I probably wouldn't risk imprisonment
| on a stranger either.
| atdrummond wrote:
| I don't blame the doctors either. My pain doctor was a
| rural boy from my hometown who made good, graduated from
| Berkeley and finished medical school and finished desirable
| postdocs at Harvard. He simply straight up quit pain
| management as a specialty rather than be forced to provide
| his patients with what he considered subpar care. The loss
| of doctors like him hurts particularly badly, as it leaves
| us with pain specialists who either knowingly ignore the
| decades of successfully treated patients who used opioids
| or the remaining (and they do still exist) pill mill
| operations, who have simply gotten more sophisticated in
| their execution. Regardless of which doctor archetype
| chronic pain patients end up with, they're going to suffer.
| google234123 wrote:
| We also now know that those treatments kill people and
| users gain dependence and tolerance to opioids. It's more
| than just protecting their medical license.
| atdrummond wrote:
| The proportion of patients who become addicted from
| properly prescribed opioids is extremely small. The
| majority of addicts created were provided with opioids
| that were not appropriate for their particular medical
| situation, in doses that were too high, and on a regimen
| that exceeded in length what was supported by the medical
| evidence. The proportion of new cancer patients who go on
| to receive palliative care that includes opioids who end
| up becoming addicted has always been, and remains, in the
| low single digits. For patients with a genuine need and
| who are properly inducted and maintained on them, opioids
| are a powerful and useful medical tool.
|
| Further, the bulk of use in illegal opioids stateside,
| such as fentanyl and its analogues, is not (at least
| today) driven by the conversion of the legal opioid user
| to an illegal drug user. Fentanyl is now commonly found
| in drugs that never previously would have contained an
| opioid, such as counterfeit benzos and MDMA. Further, the
| majority of fentanyl users on the street arrive at its
| use after consuming other illegal/street drugs. For those
| who started on other opioids, their first opioid will
| tend to be the illegally diverted pills or liquid cough
| treatments containing codeine/hydrocodone called "lean".
| Very few new users of fentanyl and fentanyl analogues
| come from legal opioid users, mainly because very few new
| users are now inducted on reckless prescriptions such as
| an immediate script for 180 Oxycontin and 240
| benzodiazepene pills a month. Your narrative is about a
| decade out of date at this point.
|
| Thomas Kline is a superb resource if you want to take a
| deeper dive into the actual statistics and how the
| narrative of a crisis was used to systematically deny law
| abiding patients the pain treatment they should receive.
| https://twitter.com/thomasklinemd
| google234123 wrote:
| A meta study of 38 studies from 7 years ago on patients
| using opioids for chronic pain found that 21-29% of the
| patients misuse the drugs and 8-12% of the patients are
| addicted to them. That doesn't seem "extremely small"
| like you said, though maybe it's better now. I think
| there are reasons why opioids are no longer recommended
| for the treatment of most patients with chronic pain that
| you aren't fairly acknowledging.
|
| https://journals.lww.com/pain/Abstract/2015/04000/Rates_o
| f_o...
| atdrummond wrote:
| https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMra1507771
| Volkow is a mainstream researcher, using data from the
| peak of the crisis, and cites the rate at just under 8%.
| It is not at all unreasonable to assume that with proper
| prescribing (unlike what happened in the 90s and 2000s)
| that chronic pain patients can have opioid misuse and
| addiction numbers near or matching that of palliative
| care patients, where addiction rates are closer to 1%
| than 10%.
| exolymph wrote:
| Who fucking cares? This wouldn't be nearly as huge of a
| problem if people with a physical dependency -- inclusive
| of addicts, but by NO MEANS exclusively addicts -- could
| reliably access safe, reliably dosed opioids instead of
| getting pushed to street drugs.
| google234123 wrote:
| If these people have access to a doctor/health care then
| there they definitely have options to treat their
| addition. Any family physician would be happy to discuss
| treatment options.
|
| The problem of people without health care is a bigger and
| separate issue.
| fvv wrote:
| Sorry if i sound blatantly stupid with my question, maybe
| In your case this could not be a sufficient solution for
| pain but did you ever tried with something like Marijuana
| and if it's illegal in you state considered migrating where
| it's legal? Or even considered to relocate to somewhere
| where you can get access to proper medication ?
| dijonman2 wrote:
| You can buy oxy on the street. Super expensive. $1/mg.
| throwaway42124 wrote:
| I'm sorry you're in this situation.
|
| Consider buying your medicine from the dark web as a
| possible workaround.
| Gatsky wrote:
| Sorry to hear you have this problem. Chronic pain
| understanding and management is medieval, and seemingly
| getting worse rather than better over time.
| atdrummond wrote:
| I really appreciate your kind thoughts. Thankfully
| Vipassana meditation has helped keep me sane in spite of
| the inane restrictions my doctors have been put under and
| also just so happens to help reduce the pain to a somewhat
| more manageable level. It's funny that a lot of the
| patients most aggressively hurt by simplistic one-size-
| fits-all reforms like the 90 MME cap are the patients most
| likely to support, and already be utilizing, integrative
| medicine. Such patients have been dealing with pain for
| years, decades often - they're not going to turn down any
| potential solutions that might help. All they ask is for
| their doctors to be given the autonomy necessary to
| prescribe legal, needed medications when called for.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| Is no one going to address the elephant in the room? If you're in
| a country where the lingua franca is X, you need to be able to
| speak X or life will be difficult. I'm not sure why the onus is
| on every hospital to become a kind of mini united nations here.
| umeshunni wrote:
| Many hospitals advertise internationally and rely on medical
| tourism of various sorts. You can't expect a 70 year old heart
| patient flown in from Taiwan to Phoenix to learn English for
| their surgery.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| I think if you're advertising internationally for
| international patients, it becomes reasonable to expect you
| to have translators on staff.
| paxys wrote:
| Tourism (including medical tourism) is a thing, as is
| telemedicine. In general, doctors and hospitals aren't in the
| business of turning away people just because they speak the
| "wrong" language.
| google234123 wrote:
| To be fair, most the people only speaking Spanish in the US
| aren't here for tourism.
| jka wrote:
| People travel recreationally, for business, and sometimes out
| of necessity to places where they don't speak the local
| language - perhaps you, friends, or family have, or will in
| future, experience those kinds of travel.
|
| Medical emergencies (or, to be honest, routine medical care)
| can be required for anyone, anywhere, for no particular reason.
| Care workers are no doubt familiar with that.
|
| For people to want to improve the situation for hospitals
| doesn't seem bad if it's possible. Do you think that we cannot
| achieve better?
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| _People travel recreationally, for business, and sometimes
| out of necessity to places where they don 't speak the local
| language - perhaps you, friends, or family have, or will in
| future, experience those kinds of travel._
|
| Sure, my wifes English is very good but not perfect. I
| accompany her so I can give quick translations to medical
| terms she might not know.
|
| If we ever bring her parents here to live, guess whose job
| it's going to be to make sure they understand doctors? Well,
| mostly hers... but you get my point. The onus is on us.
|
| I have no expectation that every hospital should be able to
| communicate in every language on earth.
| [deleted]
| jka wrote:
| Thanks - that all makes sense, and I agree that generally
| it makes sense to navigate life with realistic
| expectations.
|
| Having optimism, and deciding to challenge existing
| limitations can both be useful too, though.
|
| > I have no expectation that every hospital should be able
| to communicate in every language on earth.
|
| I like the way you stated that. At first it made me think
| about how to improve translations. Now it's making me
| wonder whether there is a more universal common medical
| language (in many situations, I think that human care for
| each other doesn't require much communication at all).
| jspash wrote:
| I recently went to Poland for a quick 2 day holiday. Felt great
| before I left. Felt great while I was there. Tested positive
| for covid the morning I was supposed to fly home. Fast forward
| a bit and I'm in the back of an ambulance while my partner was
| on the plane back home.
|
| They put me up in a hotel for 10 days. Fed me 3 times a day.
| Checked on me twice a day. And on day 10, opened the door and I
| was on my own.
|
| How I could have managed that without Google translate, I don't
| know. None of the doctors or nurses spoke more than a few words
| of English. And I could barely say hello, goodbye or thank you.
| (I can now!)
|
| As you say, life would have been difficult. It was difficult
| even _with_ google translate. But it made the interactions much
| easier on both parties involved.
|
| I would hope that if someone was visiting my country on
| holiday, or to visit their relatives, and happened to get sick,
| that the hospital would do all they could to communicate with
| them and not treat them like they shouldn't even be there.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| Right, but if you decided to move to Poland - you'd realise
| you probably need to speak Polish, right?
| slackfan wrote:
| There has been a better option for a long time, called on-staff
| Medical Interpreters. In fact, my spouse worked as one for
| approximately seven years. Unfortunately due to hospitals
| consolidating into medical networks and cutting costs wherever
| they could, this went from on-staff interpreters, to contract
| interpreters, to on-call phone interpreters (works incredibly
| poorly), to google translate.
|
| Blame the beurocrats running your hospital. The systems were in
| place, just have been absolutely gutted.
| standardUser wrote:
| Having multiple full-time paid translators on hand 24/7 at
| every hospital in the country would be nice, but probably not
| realistic.
| not2b wrote:
| That approach is best for cases where it works, for example in
| areas where there is a large minority of speakers of a given
| language (Spanish in the US, for example). But if the patient
| speaks a language that is unusual for the area, finding an
| interpreter is going to be more difficult, or maybe not
| possible in some cases.
| pseingatl wrote:
| You have a similar problem with respect to criminal trials of
| defendants who speak minority languages. You can find a Khmer
| interpreter easily enough in Los Angeles, but good luck in
| Miami.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Criminal trials are at least scheduled, permitting travel
| or other advance arrangements.
| munk-a wrote:
| My SO had to seek medical attention in rural southern France
| (we were visiting Carcassone) - she initially sought care at
| the local emerg where there was not a translator available, she
| speaks high-school french but most of the conversation was
| carried out through miming and charades. A few days later, as
| instructed, she followed up with a local clinic where she
| prepared a written version of her condition and brought it in
| to show the doctor, they consulted that and again went through
| a song and dance to try and mime out the response.
|
| I think it'd probably be nice if there was an english fluent
| person on staff at the emerg but I think it's unreasonable to
| expect local clinics to have support for translating especially
| when English is a rather unlikely language to be spoken in that
| area - having someone German and Italian literate would be nice
| and having someone Spanish literate (and, ideally, Basque
| literate) would be much more important.
|
| If you're running a hospital in Vancouver you better have a
| French[1], Punjabi and Mandarin translator on staff - outside
| of those I think it's reasonable to rely on tools like Google
| Translate, it sucks but full language coverage isn't
| reasonable.
|
| 1. I think a French translator might be legally required due to
| the bilingual nature of Canada but it's honestly much less
| common on the west coast compared to Punjabi and Mandarin.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Usually your staff comes from the local population which
| gives you staff members who speak the languages you would
| need.
| missblit wrote:
| Unless a recent immigrant or tourist has a medical
| emergency right?
|
| Or even a longer-term immigrant who never quite learned
| much medical vocabulary.
| djrogers wrote:
| There are relatively few native French speakers in
| Vancouver..
| throwawayboise wrote:
| > I think it's reasonable to rely on tools like Google
| Translate, it sucks but full language coverage isn't
| reasonable.
|
| Far better than what was possible before, when as a tourist
| you maybe had a phrasebook or something similar.
|
| This is part of the risk of travel into an area where you
| don't know the language.
|
| Also if you are going to permanently move to such a place,
| it's incumbent on _you_ to become functionally fluent in the
| local language. Nobody there owes you a special accomodation.
| munk-a wrote:
| > Also if you are going to permanently move to such a
| place, it's incumbent on you to become functionally fluent
| in the local language. Nobody there owes you a special
| accomodation.
|
| Functional fluency doesn't really cover hospital
| interactions though, right? I can live for decades in Paris
| without knowing what the word for chest pains or sprained
| ankle are.
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| I've lived in a foreign country where I learned the local
| language and was hospitalised twice during the time I
| lived there. My vocabulary certainly didn't contain very
| much medical vocabulary, and it wasn't an issue at all.
| At worst you're Google translating one or two words, or
| explaining things in a slightly odd way.
|
| I could certainly say "chest pain" though.
| Talanes wrote:
| I've spoken English my whole life and still struggle to
| express the exact sensation I'm feeling to a doctor.
| djrogers wrote:
| No, I doubt you could - 'pain' and it's synonyms, as well
| as basic body parts like 'chest' are pretty basic words
| for someone who's spent decades immersed in a language...
| Cd00d wrote:
| I had experience with the charades act. Got food poisoning or
| a stomach bug in Sofia, Bulgaria and had to act out vomiting
| and diarrhea at the chemists desk. Eventually they got the
| drift, opened a box of pills and gave me a sheet of them with
| no further instruction.
|
| I think I could have been successful if I knew some French,
| but alas, I opted for Spanish in high school. At the time it
| seemed Bulgarians over a certain age had French for their
| second (or third) language, and the younger folks had
| English.
| Xenoamorphous wrote:
| > At the time it seemed Bulgarians over a certain age had
| French for their second (or third) language, and the
| younger folks had English.
|
| Yes this happens in Spain too. People over 50 or 55 or so
| were taught French at school but younger people were taught
| English.
|
| However don't expect most of them to speak much of it.
| brianwawok wrote:
| > By 2028, it is expected that health care spending in the U.S.
| will reach nearly one fifth of the nation's gross domestic
| product
|
| It is a balance of features vs price. Right now, we need to do
| absolutely everything we can to keep the price of medical care
| as low as possible.
|
| In the US it might make sense for most hospitals to have people
| on staff for Spanish. I don't think we as a country can afford
| 270 other languages of full time staff. We should use tech in
| any way possible to cut this cost.
| w-j-w wrote:
| slackfan wrote:
| Bluntly speaking, this is not a problem that tech can solve.
| Because nothing, no video calls, no vr, no phone calls, can
| replace an on-site professional. There are approximately top
| 10 languages you want to have staff for, and then the rest
| can be handled by contractors. But you have to remember that
| most "staff" are actually 1099 contractors now because they
| can be paid submarket wages that way.
|
| Thanks, monopolies.
| nradov wrote:
| Medicare and most private insurers will pay for medical
| translation or interpretation services when necessary. It's
| HCPCS billing code T1013. Generally hospitals would make a
| small gross profit on it, so I'm puzzled why they would
| eliminate those positions if there is enough demand to keep
| them busy.
| kvathupo wrote:
| What are countries with more functional healthcare systems
| doing differently?
|
| When it comes to comparisons with other countries, much of the
| dialogue in the US is centered on insurance coverage. That
| said, I'm curious if other countries have found better
| solutions to similarly fundamental issues, such as doctors
| working long hours, doctors being forced to maximize the number
| of patients, continued medical education, and patient education
| about the doctor-patient relationship.
| wswope wrote:
| Career healthtech worker; opinions are my own; focusing only
| on the provider-specific questions you're asking:
|
| Biggest problem (w.r.t. provider overwork and availability)
| is regulatory capture by AMA and hospital groups. The AMA has
| for decades induced an artificial shortage of MDs by limiting
| the number of available residency slots. In particular,
| there's an acute shortage of slots for primary care providers
| (gen practice, family med, internal medicine, OBGYN) - which
| combined with financial incentive, leads to an oversupply of
| specialists.
|
| AMA is also very assertive about keeping alternative
| providers (e.g. nurse practitioners) from having the rights
| to perform certain procedures - again as a form of financial
| protectionism. I'm picking the worst possible example,
| because it goes wrong _all the time_ , but in many LatAm
| countries for example, routine x-rays and ultrasounds are
| often read by technologists rather than radiologists. Broadly
| speaking, there's a chilling effect of provider liability, in
| that your PCP may not be a dermatologist, so instead of doing
| a mole screen themselves during your annual office visit,
| they send you for a specialist visit instead of doing it in
| house (to avoid the unlikely chance they miss something
| subtle the derm might've caught) - costing more money,
| fueling the oversupply of specialty care, and letting the
| "general" skills of GPs atrophy even further.
|
| TLDR: The American Medical Association kills people.
| kvathupo wrote:
| I initially thought this was a fringe comment, but I was
| surprised to learn that your criticisms have basis, with
| adherents like Milton Friedman [1]. It certainly toppled my
| presumptive association of the AMA with putting patient
| care first.
|
| P.S. I found this tidbit on tobacco particularly
| troublesome [2].
|
| [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Medical_Associ
| ation#C...
|
| [2] - https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/American_Medica
| l_Assoc...
| oblvious-earth wrote:
| Aaron Carroll did a Youtube Series back in 2014 on the topic,
| even if you don't want to watch the videos there's a lot of
| good links in the description of each one:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yN-
| MkRcOJjY&list=PLkfBg8ML-g...
|
| From what I remember: Insurance is one reason, Hospitals not
| engaging in collective bargaining (e.g. vs. NHS in England
| which makes decisions about what to spend money on and makes
| companies bid on contracts for the whole country), wasteful
| premium care that adds little to patient outcomes (e.g. vs
| Singapore which has a privatised tiered healthcare system but
| heavily regulates healthcare so this doesn't happen), and
| simply paying Doctors far more money.
| scotty79 wrote:
| Why is Google translate still so bad?
|
| I remember that when it was introduced many years ago it was
| horribly bad but it's badness was a hope that things will improve
| quickly.
|
| And after so many years and so much data available to google it's
| still that bad.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| I'm sure it's possible to make their discharge instruction
| template, but it seems inevitable they're hand out instructions
| to people who won't understand them.
|
| Even with native speakers, medical instructions can be difficult.
| You can find lists of commonly confused English medical terms:
| https://www.antidote.me/blog/medical-terms-a-to-z-common-and...
| https://www.2ascribe.com/articles/health-wellness/40-words-t...
|
| And, of course, there are still plenty of illiterate people.
| abortionlover69 wrote:
| [deleted]
| jquery wrote:
| Deepl is a better option. It feels several years ahead of Google
| Translate in quality. I know enough Japanese to hurt myself, and
| Deepl is definitely giving the superior translations, by far,
| which is great for my studies. As an analogy, it's like going
| from 144p to 360p (a good human translation ranges from 720p to
| 4k+). Yeah 360p video is still blurry but it's in a different
| league than 144p.
| anon_123g987 wrote:
| The problem with machine translation is not the obvious general
| mediocrity, but the occasional undetected catastrophic failure,
| especially in medical context. I don't think DeepL (or any
| other fully automated system) is any more reliable in this
| sense.
| potatoman22 wrote:
| Can any automated solution be reliable enough? I don't think
| so unless you can prove it does less harm than a professional
| medical translator.
| atdrummond wrote:
| For those who know better than I - does this article, when saying
| Taiwanese, refer to Taiwanese Mandarin or the language also known
| as Taigi/Taigu?
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| When speaking: probably not Mandarin, as in that case they
| would have no difficulty finding an interpreter.
|
| When writing: not a relevant question, as Google Translate is
| for the written form, not spoken dialects.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| Considering they were using google translate, I assume they
| meant Taiwanese Mandarin. Though usually when I hear taiwanese
| as a language in english it's tai-gi.
| atdrummond wrote:
| I was doing some research on Hokkien in general the other day
| and that's when I noticed some using the endonym Taigu
| instead. I'm not sure what the difference, if any, is.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| Taigu is a Taiwanese-specific dialect of Hokkien.
|
| Hokkien is spoken outside Taiwan (e.g. Fujian).
| atdrummond wrote:
| I'm aware of that, so apologies if that wasn't clear. I
| was referring to the Taigu/Taigi distinction as the
| source of my uncertainty.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Hokkien is spoken outside Taiwan (e.g. Fujian).
|
| It would be pretty shocking if that wasn't the case,
| since Hokkien is spelled Fu Jian .
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| Right, but when people say "Hokkien" in English they
| generally mean Min Nan Yu - though I've also heard the
| term "Southern Min" used.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| I've only heard 'gi', but it looks like alternate
| pronunciations[0].
|
| I've only really dabbled in the language, but I quickly got
| the impression it's not exactly standardised. Even
| something as simple as 'I' seems to have two pronunciations
| (gua and wa).
|
| [0] https://www.mkdict.net/results?query=%E8%AA%9E+&page=1&
| q_typ...
| atdrummond wrote:
| Ah, now that you've highlighted the specific
| pronunciation divergence the two separate
| transliterations now make sense. I really appreciate the
| reply, given the relatively low stakes here.
| aaron695 wrote:
| pseingatl wrote:
| Telemedicine is now a "thing," it is not that difficult to find a
| medical professional in another country who is fluent in English
| as well as the target language. Just as X-Rays are now commonly
| sent overseas to be read, you can set up a Zoom call with a
| medical colleague who is bilingual.
|
| On the other hand, if you are complaining about the quality of
| Google Translate, that is another matter. Deepl.com's
| translations are better, but they support fewer languages. Google
| Translate works on the amount of source material available in the
| foreign language and what kind of source material. Mandarin can
| be quite good. Legal Arabic isn't that bad either, after a United
| Nations project to translate all Iraqi laws into English. There's
| not that much Burmese; Thai translations are uniformly horrible
| and as for Mizo? Forget it.
| 1986 wrote:
| As with anything in US healthcare, it's never that simple, e.g.
| Telehealth providers outside of the US can't bill Medicare
| (https://mhealthintelligence.com/news/doctors-outside-us-
| cann...) which covers about 1/5 of the population.
| [deleted]
| atdrummond wrote:
| I and some others in the healthcare/healthcare tech spaces
| volunteered to create a discharge templating system for many of
| the top non-English and non-Spanish languages used in the United
| States - specifically the top languages in the Northwest to
| start. Our offering utilized data from, and would have been
| integrated with, an EMR whose name means "particularly
| impressive" even if their response was anything but. After openly
| communicating our plans with this firm for many, many months
| (over two years for some of us) we were informed right before our
| intended trial that we would be denied from providing our
| services to the patients (and their providers) who truly needed
| it. We were never given a reason and I've not seen any product
| released by this firm in the interim to make me think we were
| potential competition to any part of their EMR suite.
|
| It was a truly perplexing and depressing outcome. Worse, as some
| of our team hadn't yet had their sense of possibility and belief
| in the US medical system destroyed, I saw first hand a number of
| talented persons simply walk away from doing any work in health
| or healthcare tech. It was a double blow that went beyond just
| the loss of the software that was being created; people who
| otherwise would have dedicated their lives to improving patient
| outcomes instead went elsewhere with their careers or
| volunteering lives.
| nojito wrote:
| Doubt your company is large enough to partner with them.
|
| The issue with discharge templating is that EVERY single client
| under that company gets customized support from them until you
| are able to guarantee providing that level of custom support
| you don't have a shot in partnering with them.
|
| There's a reason why Caregility is the solution instead.
|
| https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/mount-sinai-eases-tran...
|
| Touching the templates themselves is never going to scale.
| atdrummond wrote:
| It wasn't a company - there was zero profit motive here - and
| we had received very helpful advice from them and strong
| support until we got close to starting a trial, at which
| point communication suddenly ceased and it became clear
| something had changed with regards to our relationship with
| them.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Perhaps when they actually got serious, they escalated it
| to legal, and the lawyers shot it down due to your entity
| not being able to take enough liability off of their hands
| (conjecture). I can see the execution side stringing you
| along but no one having actually done the legal due
| diligence first, who may have shot it down early enough to
| prevent you wasting your time.
| pythko wrote:
| I'm curious for more details on what your templating system was
| and how it worked. If you're up for sharing, I'd love to hear
| about it.
|
| I know the aforementioned EMR puts a lot of emphasis on their
| After Visit Summaries, which sounds somewhat similar to what
| you describe.
| atdrummond wrote:
| Feel free to email me. I'm dealing with a death close to me
| and some estate related issues so I may take some time to get
| back to you but I will.
|
| For what it is worth, we never saw ourselves as a replacement
| for the After Visit Summaries but rather an adjunct that
| ensured said Summaries could be understood and utilized by
| non-speakers or ESL patients who perhaps are not as confident
| in their skills.
| sjtindell wrote:
| My partner has used an EMR called Epic in her work and it, like
| all EMRs it seems, is trash. Government protections and a moat
| of network effects, they're untouchable.
| potatoman22 wrote:
| It's hard to design software that's both flexible and
| reliable enough to meet the needs of these medical users. In
| an ideal world imo, hospitals could plug in various modules
| into an overarching health IT framework -- that way they
| could pick and choose what works the best for them. However,
| that would mean they're now working with dozens of
| systems/companies instead of just one.
| bena wrote:
| EMR software, like all medical software, suffers from a
| variation of the Dead Sea Effect.
|
| Those who are truly invested in EMR software are not
| developers and developers are not invested in EMR software.
| So, as a developer, it's a job you take because you need a
| job. And if you're competent, you can get a job elsewhere
| eventually. If you're not, well, it's not like medical
| software has a deep talent pool to draw from. You can coast
| for a long time.
|
| Combined with that, you have to work with doctors and nurses.
| Doctors especially operate under the belief that demonstrated
| competence in one area correlates to expertise in all areas.
| No one bikesheds harder than a doctor. Except a doctor who
| fancies himself a programmer as well.
| potatoman22 wrote:
| Besides pay, is there any reason a dev would be more
| invested in any other B2B app? A few people I know work in
| medical software, and a lot of them think it's meaningful
| work.
| analog31 wrote:
| A relative of mine is deaf, and relies on Google voice
| recognition in order to comprehend her doctors. The doctors are
| all amazed that such a thing exists.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-03-17 23:00 UTC)