App developed to bridge language divide in fight against Covid-19
The new AwezaMed app, which was developed by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, was expected to be instrumental in saving lives.
A locally developed application that breaks down language barriers to improve communication of Covid-19 protocols and other information related to the fight against the pandemic has received the thumbs up.
“The app 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.
“The context of the application was developed in collaboration with health experts,” higher education, science and innovation minister Blade Nzimande said.
The new AwezaMed app, which was developed by the CSIR (Council for Scientific and Industrial Research), was expected to be instrumental in saving lives.
“It is common that the healthcare provider and patient often do not share a common language. This results in serious challenges such as poorer patient experience, incorrect diagnoses, increased stress levels for the patient and misunderstandings about post-consultation self-care instruction,” he said.
To bridge the gap and avoid such challenges, the app was said to feature localised technology such as text-to-speech and machine translation.
An automatic speech recognition feature also allowed for the recognition and transcription of speech in any of the 11 official languages in South Africa, while machine translation took input text in the source language and translated it to the target language of the user.
The language techniques used in the driving of the application was hosted and distributed by the SA Centre for Digital Language Resources.
The app’s database also featured more than 1 800 questions, reassurances, explanations and patient responses with key vocabulary curated through a reinforcement process with oversight from a team of medical professionals.
It was hoped the app would have potential benefits for the public healthcare sector beyond Covid-19, and would go a long way towards improving trust between healthcare workers and patients while also allowing for more accurate diagnoses and the saving of lives.
The app was currently only available to download on Android phones and could be downloaded here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=za.co.aweza.covid19.
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