Video Conferencing Resuscitates Hospitals' Interpreter Services: Page 3 of 12

These conditions put considerable strain on the hospitals. "When we don't have interpreter services, or [medical] providers who speak the patient's language," he says, "we're left to rely on family or relatives. That's not appropriate or acceptable." Family members untrained in medical terminology often commit interpretation errors, leading to faulty diagnosis and incorrect treatment, Cohen points out.

Another option is on-demand interpretation services, but these can be expensive and there's no guarantee that the interpreter will have medical training.

So what's to be done? Enter Melinda Paras, the Oakland, Calif.-based consultant who built and manages the HCIN system for the three Northern California hospitals. Paras thought of the idea of delivering video-based interpretation about six years ago, when she was a commissioner at San Francisco's Highland and General hospitals. There, she worked with Cohen to develop a pilot project that delivered limited videoconferencing capabilities for a clinical trial.

When Cohen moved from Highland Hospital to San Joaquin General in 2003, he became a "champion" of the videoconferencing model and agreed to work with Paras to develop a more comprehensive interpretation system at San Joaquin General. That partnership landed a federal grant in October 2004, to develop what would become HCIN (see "The Hard Sell").

HCIN consists of three primary components. At its heart is a call center at San Joaquin General, which is based on the Cisco Unified Contact Center Express and the Cisco Unified CallManager. Cisco Unified Contact Center Express provides the basic call center capabilities, such as call routing and contact management, for HCIN, while the CallManager is the call-processing component of Cisco's communications systems.