The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and Aweza have collaborated to develop a unique mobile application to bridge communication barriers between healthcare providers and patients.<\/p>\n
Aweza is an international award-winning tech-based initiative that strives to inspire and empower South Africans to overcome language barriers across all sectors of society.<\/p>\n
The mobile application, AwezaMed COVID-19, features localised speech technology such as speech recognition, machine translation, and text-to-speech developed by the CSIR and works on any Android smartphone.<\/p>\n
It enables healthcare providers to access a phrase in English, translate it into any South African official language, and play the phrase in the selected language.<\/p>\n
Originally developed with content pertaining to maternal healthcare and obstetrics, the application has been enhanced with COVID-19-related content and is available for download from the Play Store. There is no cost for users.<\/p>\n
\u201cBy bridging the communication barrier, the trust relationship between the healthcare provider and patient can be improved.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn addition, the patient\u2019s experience and the healthcare provider-patient confidentiality can be improved, and lives can possibly be saved,\u201d said Dr Karen Calteaux, CSIR Digital Audio-Visual Technologies Research Group Leader.<\/p>\n
The content of the application was developed in collaboration with health experts and is aimed at supporting healthcare workers to communicate with patients at healthcare facilities, especially during COVID-19-related screening and triage.<\/p>\n
\u201cAwezaMed emanated from a project funded by the Department of Sport, Arts and Culture, that strives to bridge language barriers between healthcare practitioners and patients in clinics. A decision was taken to develop a version to address language barriers experienced by medical professionals working with COVID-19 patients,\u201d Calteaux said on Friday.<\/p>\n