[in response to Neil Pakeham-Walsh, UK: https://www.hifa.org/dgroups-rss/assessing-language-barriers-health-faci... ]
Dear Neil
Thank you for sending the document on history exam from UCL. I am working on a follow-up paper looking at the use of health-passports for history taking. We noted that clinicians are mostly recording medication and treatment information, rather than recording symptoms and diagnosis. To understand this, we conducted a focus group discussion with ten healthcare professionals who participated in the study we did in Zomba.
We have compiled a collection of symptom expressions in Chichewa and reviewed medical terminology in vernacular languages. It would be valuable to collaborate with colleagues from Clear Global on developing a resource tailored for healthcare professionals. I am particularly interested in exploring how computational linguistics techniques can be leveraged to support the creation and enhancement of such language resources.
Issues of language are also relevant beyond interactions during medical consultations. Using accurate language expressions and translations is crucial for all data collection exercises. Most data is gathered through questions formulated in English, which are then verbally translated and interpreted by the data collectors. This process can introduce inaccuracies, potentially compromising the quality of the collected data.
I am interested to work with HIFA and other partners in this area. We are a small research team but within the right partnership we can do lot of good work.
HIFA profile: Amelia Taylor is a Lecturer in AI at Malawi University of Business and Applied Sciences. Interests: Malawi AI, NLP, Health Informatics, Data Visualisation. ataylor AT mubas.ac.mw
