The Trends and Technologies Shaping the Future of Medical Translation

The future of medical translation is being shaped by both key global healthcare trends and continual advancements in translation technology.

Here we explore these healthcare trends, before looking at the innovative tech solutions being used to improve the speed, accuracy and accessibility of medical translations.

Top Trends Affecting Healthcare Translation

Trend 1: Globalization of the Healthcare Sector

As it responds to global health challenges, such as pandemics and global diseases, the healthcare sector is becoming increasing globalized, driving demand for greater and faster access to clinical information in multiple languages.

The growth of cross-border collaboration, for example, where medical teams around the world collaborate on joint clinical trials, vaccine development and drug research, is increasing the need for more accurate and accessible translated documentation to support teamworking across languages and cultures.

The continued rise of medical tourism, meanwhile, where patients seek higher-quality, affordable healthcare in other countries, drives the demand for more accessible patient information in diverse languages to meet consumer needs and support easier communication between healthcare professionals and patients.

Lastly, a more internationally mobile healthcare workforce, where healthcare professionals seek positions overseas to fill healthcare gaps, creates more culturally diverse clinical environments, where accurate, multi-lingual communication is key.

Trend 2: Patient-led and Personalized Healthcare

The emergence of personalized healthcare apps and content, as well as the rise of telemedicine, are leading to more patient-centric healthcare and health-related communications, which is heavily impacting on the way medical information is communicated and translated.

Accurately translated medical data and communications are now needed at a faster pace – in many cases in real-time. And medical communications now place greater emphasis on patient preferences and lifestyles, requiring translators to not only understand technical accuracy, but cultural nuances and backgrounds.

Personalized healthcare apps and wearables, such as smart rings and watches, are driving the need for more user-focused medical information across multiple languages. The increasing popularity of remote healthcare and telemedicine requires solutions for live, real-time medical translations, to meet immediate end-user needs.

The trend towards more patient-centric healthcare is also exemplified by a global focus on more equitable and accessible healthcare, particularly for marginalized communities and non-native populations. This not only requires accurate patient information across diverse languages but means translations must also consider a range of cultural sensitivities and varying literacy levels.

Trend 3: The Integration of Cutting-Edge Technologies

As with every other field of translation, healthcare translation is being transformed by continual advancements in AI and translation technology.

The emergence and progression of AI, machine learning and computer-assisted tools is increasing the speed and accuracy of automated translations, while specialized Natural Language Processing algorithms are enabling more nuanced and context-specific outputs. Advancements in voice recognition and text-to-speech technology are supporting real-time medical conversations in multiple languages, giving greater confidence to healthcare professionals and greater peace of mind to patients.

Technologies and Tools to Meet These Trends

1: Machine Learning and Post-Editing

Machine learning algorithms use the power of AI to draw upon vast datasets of medical terms and phrases, automating and streamlining the translation process, while boosting consistency and efficiency. Recent advancements in this technology support the creation of specialized medical machine translation engines that further drive accuracy and address more nuanced medical terminology.  

The addition of post-editing by a medical translation professional ensures the final output of a machine translation is both accurate and context specific. This human oversight brings that vital quality control that only a human touch can bring, without losing the speed and consistency that makes machine translation so appealing.

2: Natural Language Processing

Natural Language Processing is an AI technology that uses machine learning to drive accuracy and nuance in medical translations. These algorithms can recognize very specific medical terms and abbreviations, while also understanding contextual elements, to ensure more accurate, human-focused output. Perfect for trawling large volumes of medical data and information, such as clinical trials, patient records and medical literature, the greater focus on nuance and context makes Natural Language Processing an ideal solution for customer-facing applications such as chatbots and help tools.   

3: Computer-Assisted Translation

Computer-assisted translation tools are designed to streamline the translation workflow, by automating quality assurance processes and ensuring greater consistency with automatic terminology matching. Features like translation memory, where a translator can match content with past translations, and terminology management, which enable the creation of specialized glossaries of medical terminology, bring a greater level of consistency across multiple languages and documents. When integrated with machine translation tools, computer-assisted translation features can bring an even great level of speed and efficiency to the translation workflow.

4: Tools to Support Real-Time Translation and Interpretation

At the forefront of medical translation tech is the emergence of tools that put the power of real-time translation into the hands of medical practitioners, ascending the language barrier to enable more effective doctor-patient interactions. Tools such as machine-learning-powered instant language assistants for consultations, and voice recognition and speech-to-text tools for real-time translation and transcription of medical conversations are transforming medical translation, by applying it directly to the healthcare environment.

Meeting Your Diverse Medical Translation Needs

Mother Tongue brings a human touch to healthcare translation, by pairing human expertise with artificial intelligence to deliver a range of AI-powered pharma solutions.

Our Life Sciences team specialize in post-editing services and the training of bespoke AI translation models tailored to your unique brand voice and terminology, to provide fast, accurate medical translations. We ensure our workflows sync effortlessly with your own systems to create a streamlined translation process between our team and yours.

Get in touch with our Life Sciences team to see how we can support you.