University develops translation software to help foreign medics

Staff from the University of Wolverhampton with project partners in the UK, Spain and Germany have spent the last 18 months helping to complete the Towards European Language Learning for Medical (Tell-Me) software package.

The aim of the project has been to develop a piece of software which can be used by doctors and other medical practitioners working abroad.

It aims to provide translation tools so users can understand patients’ symptoms and medical terms given in different languages, and so support the European Union drive to enable medical professionals to work across the continent, raising standards of treatment between countries.

The project has cost around £430,000, funded by the EU and has been led by the University of Wolverhampton, along withpartners in the UK, Spain and Germany. The University was chosen as project leader because of its extensive experience in the field of computational linguistics and language processing.

The project development phase is now drawing to a close and the next step is a conference in Brussels, where the project developers will unveil the software to a group of European leaders, in order to get feedback and establish distribution links throughout the continent.

James Keatley, the project support officer at the University of Wolverhampton’s Research Group in Computational Linguistics, said he hoped the software would make an impact.

He said: “The hope is that we can get this seen by policy-makers at the EU and, if possible, get the software recommended throughout the medical profession.

“It is a powerful piece of e-learning software which has a multi-language medical dictionary, videos illustrating parts of the body and processes.

“By using the Tell-Me platform medical professionals will be able to more accurately communicate medical issues and diagnosis to their patients and other medical professionals. This benefits the medical professional but also patients will have more confidence in the level of care they receive.”

The Brussels conference will be held on October 31.

ENDS

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission.

This publication [communication] reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.

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Date Issued: Monday 2 September 2013