Interactive point-of-care interpretation applications are feasible and assist basic communication between providers and LLP patients

Interactive translation/interpretation applications for point-of-care tasks are overall feasible from the user perspective and assist with basic communication between healthcare providers and limited-language-proficiency (LLP) patients.

Narrative synthesis #

The review's central finding across eight studies (four pilot, one prospective, two participatory, one mixed-methods) is that point-of-care interpretation applications were feasible to use and assisted with basic, everyday communication, even though they were evaluated in small single-site samples. Certainty/GRADE appraisal is left for expert review.

"the findings from these eight papers that evaluate interactive applications to streamline the interpretation process between healthcare providers and LLP patients demonstrate overall ease of use as well as provider and patient satisfaction with tools to improve communication" (Kiblinger, 2024, p. 4)

"this review clearly demonstrates that interactive translation applications can streamline the interpretation process for patients from linguistically diverse backgrounds" (Kiblinger, 2024, p. 5)

Reviewer note (probable-merge): relates to the existing corpus CLM "Healthcare staff find mobile translation apps a useful and acceptable tool for basic communication with LEP patients when an interpreter is unavailable" (Hwang 2022, primary study). This review-level thesis and that primary-study CLM are complementary; human to decide whether to link as related or keep distinct.