InterLingua Medical Publishing introduces Medical Point2's to solve language barriers in health care

According to US Census, some 37 million Americans five years of age and older —nearly one in eight residents of this country—speak a language other than English at home.

In the health care industry, non-English speaking patients represent a major challenge to medical and emergency personnel, who have to provide care without being able to properly interact with the patient. In addition, they also represent legal and financial issues for hospitals.

To help solve the language problem, InterLingua Medical Publishing has introduced a series of innovative and cost-oriented medical manuals called Medical Point2's. The Medical Point2's allow non-English speaking patients to communicate with medical and emergency personnel simply by pointing to questions and answers.

The two-column format includes foreign language and English questions and answers placed side-by-side, for the English speaker and non-English speaker to read the same questions and answers simultaneously, in the language each understands. Doctors, nurses, and emergency medical personnel point to a question —such as, "Are you in pain?"— and the patient points to an answer. There is no issue about misunderstanding each other, and no expense for an outside interpreter.

The Medical Point2 manuals include questions and answers, selected by medical professionals, which are commonly used in emergency medical situations, and to obtain general patient history information.

"The language barrier between patients and medical personnel is a crisis. Our goal with the Medical Point2's is to help hospitals and emergency services to improve the quality of health care, save money and reduce legal risks," says Jack Bernstein, Publisher.

Medical Point2's are available in English with translations in Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Hindi, Haitian Creole, Farsi, Polish, Korean, Arabic, Portuguese, Russian, French, German, Somali, Bosnian, Vietnamese and Tagalog. The series also contains eight illustrations of the human body with callouts in both English and the selected foreign language.

The single language editions are available for $16.95 each, and the composite editions for $79.95 each.