فهم حواجز اللغة في بوابات المرضى: حلول بديلة وفرص لمقدمي الرعاية الناطقين بالإسبانية

Patient portals are widely used by patients and caregivers to access medical records and manage health care. However, significant disparities persist in portal access and use among patients who speak languages other than English, particularly Spanish-speaking caregivers, with limited translation capabilities being a major barrier.

Addressing a gap in the literature, a study published in JAMIA Open (Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association) examined how Spanish-speaking caregivers of children with chronic conditions navigate language barriers in patient portals and gathered their perspectives on improving translation. The study found that caregivers commonly rely on machine translation tools and children or other family members to translate medical information found in patient portals, and they expressed interest in built-in automatic translation features. As the workarounds used by caregivers are time-consuming and may pose risks to patient safety, the authors conclude that large language models offer promising opportunities to improve machine translation of clinical text and call for future research to evaluate translation quality across languages and clinical contexts, with patient involvement in designing translation workflows to ensure they meet families’ needs.