SBIR-STTR Award

During Phase I, we propose to develop a web prototype to produce, manage, print, and speak vital healthcare documents translated into foreign languages. The proposed system will contain methods to help healthcare organizations assemble a coherent document from a series of document components, customize the document to the needs of the organization (e.g., inclusion of corporate logos and local addresses), organize them, and then retrieve these documents for printing and speaking to their patients. Although many pre-translated materials exist in the marketplace, there has been reluctance on the part of many healthcare organizations to use them. In our discussions with executives and administrators, three issues were critical for pre-translated document adoption: 1) the documents must appear to have originated from the organization, 2) the documents must have flexibility to accommodate its local terminology preferences and state regulatory requirements, and 3) the organization must have the highest confidence in the quality of the translated materials. Our system and processes will attempt to overcome these barriers. In addition, we are unaware of any existing document translation service that speaks the document in the target foreign language to address the needs of the illiterate patient. During Phase I, we will explore the challenges of creating a system to develop customizable, pre-translated documents using two examples advance directives and generic informed consent. The results will be evaluated using qualitative measures through interviews with healthcare administrators including those positioned in risk management and legal departments.

Public Health Relevance:
A national repository of quality, pre-translated documents that speak to the patient can dramatically improve the quality of information provided to our limited-English speaking patients. Current methods of translating documents are haphazard resulting in redundant translation costs by organizations and unreliable verification of the quality of translations. Both the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and the Office of Minority Health (OMH) has expressed a priority need to creating such a repository.

Public Health Relevance:
This Public Health Relevance is not available.

Thesaurus Terms:
There Are No Thesaurus Terms On File For This Project.

In the United States, significant disparity exists in the vital healthcare documents being provided to limited English-proficient (LEP) patients. In 2007, a nationwide survey of hospitals by The Joint Commission found that only 50 percent of hospitals had translated informed consent documents. Even then, the translations were often only available in Spanish. Other types of documents were translated even less frequently. Hospitals, with limited budgets for language services, are struggling to allocate resources to create quality, translated documents for their patients. During the 2005 Roundtable on Health Disparity and Information Technology, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and the Office of Minority Health (OMH) identified a national repository of translated documents as a high priority need to reduce medical errors due to language miscommunication. During Phase I of this grant, we developed and evaluated a new web-accessible platform for documents that demonstrated feasibility in creating, managing, sharing, printing, and speaking documents to patients in foreign languages. This platform, called TDARS (Translated Document Assembly and Retrieval System), allows healthcare organizations to quickly assemble coherent vital healthcare documents, instantly create quality, translated versions that can be printed, and then instruct a computer to read the translated documents to the patients. TDARS offers a high degree of flexibility in customizing documents for each organization, enables documents to be shared among institutions, provides a method to comply with The Joint Commission's document access standards, and can do all this for less than the average cost of translating one document in one language - making a library of documents economically accessible to even the smallest hospitals. During Phase II, our objective is to develop a commercial Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) product for hospitals and other healthcare organizations offered through a subscription-pricing model. We will expand TDARS to include a core set of documents identified as being of greatest need during our Phase I evaluation, making them available in the languages identified as being most common and challenging nationwide (Spanish, Mandarin, Cantonese, Vietnamese, Russian, Arabic, Korean, and Somali). Thirty participating sites will be recruited that represent our target market population of small and medium-sized hospitals. , ,

Public Health Relevance:
A national repository of quality, pre-translated documents that can speak the documents to patients could dramatically reduce the disparity of information provided to our limited English proficient patients. Current methods of translating documents are expensive, the quality of translations is inconsistent, and efforts are being duplicated by multiple hospitals. Both the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and the Office of Minority Health (OMH) have indicated that creating such a repository is a national priority.

Thesaurus Terms:
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