NEW YORK, Nov. 4 /PRNewswire/ -- LanguageMate, the leader in the development of communication solutions for the healthcare field, announced today it will unveil the academic version of its medical Spanish product at the upcoming Association for American Medical Colleges (AAMC) Annual Meeting. The technology will be demonstrated at the LanguageMate booth #408 from November 6-11( )at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston, MA.
Private Tutor Medical Spanish (PTMS) is the first web-based language study tool of its kind funded by the National Institutes of Health. The program was designed to create a resource that enables healthcare institutions to enhance quality of care, improve patient safety, and elevate satisfaction levels for both patients and providers. Developed for and by healthcare professionals, PTMS offers three progressive levels of target proficiency. By combining best practices from the fields of second language acquisition and multimedia design, the system emulates the experience of learning a language from an experienced private tutor.
"With the incredible diversity of culture in the United States, it is imperative that medical students learn to be culturally able physicians. Spanish is the primary language spoken by over 15% of the population in the U.S., and it is critical that medical students learn to effectively communicate with this population in order to adequately care for them," said Dr. Erica Friedman, Associate Dean for Undergraduate Medical Education at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine (MSSM), one of the sites that participated in pilot trials of PTMS. "LanguageMate's Private Tutor Medical Spanish provides the necessary flexibility to allow students and other healthcare providers to learn medical Spanish during their incredibly demanding schedules. The program is easy to use and allows for tomorrow's technology savvy physicians and healthcare providers to feel more confident in their ability to communicate with their Spanish-speaking patients."
Among the many challenges of practicing medicine, communicating effectively with patients is one of the most salient. With more than 24 million people with Limited English Proficiency (LEP) in the country, there is a significant barrier to obtaining equitable healthcare. By adapting PTMS, medical schools can help prepare tomorrow's healthcare professionals for the challenges ahead.
"PTMS is the combination of over three years of hard work by a very dedicated team of medical educators, linguistic researchers, computer scientists, and curriculum designers," said William Z. Tan, Founder and President of LanguageMate. "The AAMC Annual Meeting is a wonderful opportunity for LanguageMate to showcase PTMS to the academic medical community."
The technology will be demonstrated at the Association for American Medical Colleges (AAMC) Annual Meeting from November 6-11( )at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston, MA. The meeting is a gathering of medical schools, teaching hospitals, academic and professional organizations leading to improve public health through medical education, research, and high quality patient care.
About LanguageMate
LanguageMate is the leader in the development of communication solutions in the healthcare field. The company's mission is to create tools that enable healthcare institutions to enhance the quality of care and improve patient satisfaction. LanguageMate has received more than a dozen Small Business Innovation Research grants from the National Institutes of Health since 2004 to transform the delivery of health education and health services. By providing communication solutions, LanguageMate strives to help patients and service providers transcend the boundaries of language, culture, and geography.
For more information, visit: www.languagemate.com.
SOURCE LanguageMate
