Found in translation

Two local governments in Wales have launched a new telehealth system that is able to share and display vital health information in different languages for different users.

Tunstall’s multilingual system is able to communicate with service users in Welsh while displaying information to monitoring nurses in English.

The telehealth units monitor vital signs including blood pressure, blood oxygen levels and pulse rates in the home. They are commonly used by people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

The two councils using the new multilingual telehealth systems, Anglesey and Gwynedd, believe that the daily monitoring of vital signs will help reduce the number of unplanned hospital admissions.

According to community support projects coordinator, Rhianwen Jones telecare has provided an innovative way to help monitor COPD patients living in rural areas of Wales.

“On average a district nurse makes 5.6 visits to patients a day, but with the aid of telehealth we hope to raise this to nine patients being monitored by one specialist nurse at a time,” she said.

“By increasing the efficiency of our COPD services, we can support more patients in the home to help avoid unnecessary GP and hospital visits and reduce the National Health Service’s carbon footprint.”