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Video Conferencing Resuscitates Hospitals' Interpreter Services: Page 6 of 12

The "political will" of the hospital administrators went to work, however, to overcome their reluctance. "We showed them how urgent the staff at the hospitals needed the services, and [closing off their networks] wasn't the way the hospitals wanted to operate," she says.

Miraculously, the HCIN infrastructure has seldom disappointed, Paras says. "We've never experienced network congestion, or noticeable latency or video problems" with the MPLS network, a private system used only for the interpreter services. "We've had a couple of outages due to loss of MPLS service and, on one occasion, telephone work in a closet disconnected the network.

There have also been occasional challenges with audio volumes in various hospital units. For instance, physicians and nurses in the neo-natal intensive care wanted the volume on the speakerphones lowered, while those in the emergency rooms, which have extensive background noise, wanted the volume turned up. Those issues have been resolved.

Jim Carr is an Aptos, Calif.-based freelance business and technology writer. Write to him at [email protected].

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