News Article
February 28, 2011
Duke AHEC Program Announces Polyglot Med Spanish iPhone App
The Duke Area Health Education Center (AHEC) has launched a new tool to bridge the communication gap between health care providers and Spanish-speaking patients. Polyglot Med Spanish, now available on iTunes for free download, is a simple-to-use app that offers immediate audio translation of more than 3,000 common words, phrases and assessment questions from English to Spanish and from Spanish to English.
Polyglot Med Spanish is available for use on the iPhone, iPod Touch, and the iPad. The tool offers phrases categorized in conversations to allow the health care provider to practice a series of assessment or conversational questions structures to solicit a “yes” or “no” response. Users can create their “favorites” list, so that locating their most frequently used phrases or questions are fast and easy.
The voice of Polyglot Med Spanish is Alicia Gonzalez, a Honduran native and Psychiatric Clinical Nurse Specialist who has worked with the North Carolina AHEC Program to develop and introduce beginning Spanish programs for health care providers since 1998.
“Many health care providers work with patients who are predominately Spanish speaking on a daily basis,” said Gonzalez. “Polyglot Med Spanish is designed to teach them the common clinical phrases for use in their work setting. Saying even a few phrases in Spanish to their patient will communicate much more than just that statement. It communicates your interest and motivation to work with them.”
The original Polyglot: Multimedia Medical Spanish Translator was developed in 1999 by a Duke University medical student BJ Lawson. Since 1999, the Duke AHEC Program has distributed CD-ROM versions of Polyglot to health care providers and health professions students across North Carolina with the support of the North Carolina AHEC Program.
The Polyglot Med Spanish app is available for free download in the iApp Store through April 7, 2011.