Health services around the world are amongst the largest organisations that deal with the public. People engage with a wide range of these services in many ways. Lattice Voice applications are highly relevant to all of these situations, enabling medical professionals to communicate clearly with patients who speak a different language to themselves. The diverse contexts in which this applies include where patients are:

• Subject of unfortunate accidents in the street,
• Telephoning hospitals and surgeries for appointments and results,
• Visiting local doctors’ surgeries,
• Staying in hospital for extended times for elective surgery, and
• Visiting accident and emergency departments of local hospitals.

In the UK, for example, the Health service employs over 1.3 million people, and treats 1.5 million patients per day. Lattice Voice can be deployed to help triage nurses at A&E departments to communicate with foreign language speakers, ensuring that their problems are clearly understood by the medical team, and conversely that each patient is fully aware of the priorities of the department at the time.

Receptionists at hospitals and doctors’ surgeries can use Lattice Voice applications to ensure that telephone callers and visitors can make appointments with the relevant staff in an efficient and compassionate manner. Medics attending traffic accidents can use Lattice Voice applications to communicate with foreign-speaking patients, ensuring that their present trauma is not further aggravated by lack of personal engagement and relevant information. Doctors on ward rounds can use Lattice Voice systems, embedded in workstations and mobile devices, to ensure that their foreign patients are fully aware of their circumstances, the ongoing results of their tests are understood and their proposed treatments are properly explained. In this sector, probably more than any other, the engagement between professionals and public that is enabled by Lattice Voice, adds tremendously to the level of service enjoyed, both by the patients and by the medical staff.