It is well recognized that when there is a language barrier between patients and physicians, the quality of care delivered suffers. With the rapid rise of patients for whom Spanish is their primary language, this is becoming an increasingly urgent issue to address.

Ultralingua, Inc. has published the Vox Spanish-English Medical Dictionary and Verbs app ($49.99) to help bridge this gap. The app is available for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Read on to see whether this app can help you take better care of your Spanish-speaking patients.

Features:

The app provides these key features:

• English-to-Spanish and Spanish-to-English word translations

• Search function

• Verb conjugations

• A number pad that instantaneously spells out the number in the selected language

• The ability to look up any word with a single tap

It is important to note that this app does not provide any sort of instruction or lessons on how to speak Spanish or form sentences.  It provides translation only, with no definitions or meanings of words.  Additionally, it is specifically a medical dictionary, meaning that ordinary, non-medical terms may not be found (in the screenshot below, I tried to search “girl,” with no results.)

Therefore, this app would be most useful to practitioners or students with at least some background in the Spanish language.  As far as medical terms go, however, this dictionary seems to be thorough.  It even includes different bacterial and fungal species.

User Interface:

Overall, the user interface is decent, but takes a little getting used to.  Because it is not completely intuitive, Ultralingua has kindly provided us with an instruction page that briefs the user on how to navigate the app and use the key features, complete with picture demonstrations.  This short guide can be accessed by tapping on the little lightbulb icon in the bottom left-hand corner.

For the most part, even without taking a peek at the user guide, the app is pretty easily navigated after a few minutes of experimentation.  For example, you might think the clock icon at the top will translate times, but it actually displays your search history.

As mentioned earlier, you can tap on any word and be taken to a translation of that word immediately.  The languages will also instantaneously swap.  This is a handy feature, though I wouldn’t have known it existed without reading the user guide.  At times it was also a little hard to tap the words with enough precision that the translation would come up.

Uses in Practice:

This app would be most useful in practice for looking up a few quick terms.  Even fluent Spanish speakers may not know how to translate some obscure disease, especially if they were trained in an English-speaking country.  The search function is fast enough that a doctor could even look up a word in front of a patient.

The conjugation feature is helpful, but would probably be too tedious to use during a patient conversation.  This app helps facilitate and improve physician-patient communication for the conversational physician, but for the practitioner with little to no Spanish knowledge, it will be of limited use.

Price:

• The paper version of the Vox Medical Spanish and English Dictionary sells for $35, vs. the $49.99 for this app.

Likes:

• Thorough dictionary of medical Spanish terms
• Decent UI with short guide to fill in the gaps
• Fast search function
• Provides a medical student or practitioner with a quick reference in their pocket

Dislikes:

• It’s got “granulation” but not “grandmother.” Though not intended to be a comprehensive dictionary, it would have been helpful to include some non-medical words that are commonly used in patient conversation, e.g., family members for taking a family history. This is yet another reason why this app might not be as useful for users who lack a solid background in Spanish
• Does not include audio.  Pronunciation of a different language can be tough, especially with unfamiliar words.  Adding an audio component, where the user can hear a speaker pronounce the word correctly, would be tremendously useful and provide a strong reason for someone to choose the app rather than the paperback dictionary

Overall:

• If you’re at least a decent Spanish speaker who would like to improve the clarity of your conversations with patients, this app is a good reference.
• It’s fast, easy to use, and mobile, and future updates including audio pronunciation and a few select non-medical terms would greatly improve its usefulness.
• If your Spanish proficiency is so limited that you desperately need a translator to begin with, this app is probably not worth the price.

iTunes Link

Medical Spanish, made by Batoul Apps, and available in the App Store for $6.99, just added audio to their top 25 medical app. As you can tell by the title, we’re definitely excited about the 2.0 version of this medical app. Some of the new features include audio for over 3,000 phrases, interactive bookmarking, a slightly different interface, and some new content. Did we mention there are over 3,000 phrases with audio now?

We reviewed Medical Spanish back in June and were definitely fans back then. The app even made our top 7 Medical apps list, coming in at #6. We’ll start the review by summarizing our last review, and then talking about the new features.

In our previous review, here is what we liked:

• Search function allows you to easily find thousands of key medical phrases / words instantaneously. By far the best feature of the App.
• The pharmacy section is great for giving instructions on how to take medications (dosage, timing, etc)
• You can use this app even if you can’t speak a single spanish word.
• Made by healthcare providers, so questions are on par.
• Thousands of phrases can help you with a full H&P and chief complaint.
• Can help you save time while you are waiting on the translator.

In our previous review, here are the things we didn’t like so much, and improvements we hoped for:

• A favorites section. It would be nice to have a favorites section where you could put the most frequently used spanish phrases.
• An option to where the application opens up to the search menu. I find myself using the search option 90% of the time.
• Hispanic patients tend to use more nontraditional medications, it would be helpful to have a section dedicated to some of the nontraditional med/treatments used by them.
• The developers have announced they will be adding audio to this app as well, which would be amazing.

The developers added 3 out of the 4 things we wanted to see in their new version of the app. They’ve added audio, bookmarks, and a section on commonly used medicinal herbs and plants by the Hispanic population.

Having a medical Spanish app with audio is nothing new. There is another medical app, called Emergency Medical Spanish Guide (EMSG) with this feature already. We tried out this app but were not fans because it lacked one of the most basic functions, a search feature. They also only have a couple hundred audio phrases. A search function is critical in a medical Spanish app because you don’t always have the time to go through every section to find out exactly what you’re looking for. Needless to say, with Medical Spanish adding audio, the EMSG app is nowhere close to the level of the updated version of Medical Spanish.

Audio feature and bookmarking:

To access the audio, you tap on a phrase, then a new section appears within the same page, with a play button and a star representing the bookmarks button. (Refer to the pictures). Once you tap the play button, you can stop the audio at any point in the phrase. This is all simple, fast, and fantastically done.

Issues and Improvements we’d like to see in the future:

Overall, we like the user interface, but we have some gripes with the organization of this app. The app opens up with a Review of Systems page, and lists the different systems. You have to scroll down to see other key sections, such as directions, and vocab. Also, the new medicinal herbs section is hard to find. You have to go to the vocabs section and then scroll down to medical plants. This section is crucial because almost all of us have encountered some Hispanic patients who use home remedies they get from local markets. The developers did a nice job of adding bookmarks for separate phrases, but why not add bookmarks for actual sections of the app? We’d like to be able to bookmark sections such as diagnostic tests and medicinal plans. It would also be nice to search for these sections of the app as well, instead of just specific phrases.

With it’s collection of extensive medical phrases and audio, we’d love to see this app have the ability to be a medical Spanish teaching app for healthcare providers. The developers could make a teaching mode, where they would add English audio along with the Spanish audio translations. Can you imagine making a customized playlist using the bookmarks section, then playing it on your way to work? In this manner you could memorize all of the Spanish physical exam instructions, along with anything else of your choosing.

Who this app would be great for:

Every healthcare provider who deals with a large Spanish speaking population.

Conclusion:

Our title of this review explains it all, we’re smitten with this Medical Spanish app. The developers took all the suggestions we made in our previous review and basically nailed them. With the addition of extensive audio, this is a definite must have application for healthcare providers who deal with large Hispanic populations. Unlike other medical Spanish audio apps who have only a few hundred audio phrases, this application has over 3,000. Even if you speak Spanish this could be useful for finding those key medical phrases you might not know. The user interface is quick, stable, and easy to use. The sky is the limit for this medical application and in the future we’d love to see a teaching function added. Oh, and is this app worth the $6.99 asking price? Most definitely.

[itunes]

[website]

We have an updated review of this application highlighting it’s new features. The review can be found here.

Medical Spanish is an app that helps you communicate with Spanish speaking patients in a health care setting. The app has a very detailed description in the App store, so I won’t get into the “nitty gritty”, but instead I’ll focus on the usefulness of the app. I’ll touch on this later, but you can use this app even if you do not know a single word of Spanish. (Scroll below after the conclusion section for a more detailed review of the App).

What I like about this App:

• Search function allows you to easily find thousands of key medical phrases / words instantaneously. By far the best feature of the App.
• The pharmacy section is great for giving instructions on how to take medications (dosage, timing, etc)
• You can use this app even if you cannot speak a single Spanish word.
• Made by health care providers, so questions are on par.
• Thousands of phrases can help you with a full H&P and chief complaint.
• Can help you save time while you are waiting on the translator.

Improvements that could be made:

• A favorites section. It would be nice to have a favorites section where you could put the most frequently used Spanish phrases.
• An option to where the application opens up to the search menu. I find myself using the search option 90% of the time.
• Hispanic patients tend to use more nontraditional medications, it would be helpful to have a section dedicated to some of the nontraditional med/treatments used by them.
• The developers have announced they will be adding audio to this app as well, which would be amazing.

Who this app would be great for:

• Doctors (Residents), PAs, nurses, and medical students who have a high Hispanic patient population.
• If your hospital / clinic is lacking a sufficient amount of translators, which is pretty much everyone.

Conclusion:

For anyone in the health care profession who has been waiting on a translator in order to ask just a few simple questions, this app could save you some frustration. I think this is a great app if used correctly and I would recommend it to the above people. This application doesn’t replace a translator but definitely would help you save time.

I think everyone out there at some point has been waiting outside a patient door but a translator isn’t available. This app could help you ask some key questions until the translator arrives. This app would also be useful for people who don’t need translators but might not have the best medical Spanish. I have peers who know Spanish well, but sometimes still have difficulty using their Spanish in a medical setting, this app would be great for them.

I think its important how you actually use the app as well. Trying to do a full H&P without knowing any Spanish beforehand would be difficult, but getting the chief complaint would definitely be doable.

I could see this app being used in pre-rounds. You could even write down the key questions you want to ask the patient before you enter their room. The search function is very very crucial, and I mention this throughout the review. It allows you to use this app in front of the patient because it is extremely quick and efficient.

At $6.99, it is not the cheapest app, but like I mentioned above, if you use it correctly it can save you time and frustration. Also, the developers have mentioned they will add audio to the app soon, which should make it even more enticing.

[itunes]

[website]

Further Review:

This is a very extensive medical app, with thousands of words and phrases. The homepage (1st picture), starts with the Review of Systems and if you scroll down it has a “Basic Spanish” section. On the homepage there are 5 hot buttons at the bottom of the screen. These are Pain, Numbers, Physical Exam, Prescription, and the Search function. I found the Pain, Prescription, and especially the Search function to be the most important in this app.

The Pain section is done very well. We’re often told in medicine to use PQRST to assess for Pain, Provoking, Quality, Radiation, Severity, and Timing. It would be difficult to ask these questions of a patient if you don’t speak good Spanish, because you would not be able to understand their responses. To prevent this from happening the Pain section mostly asks close ended questions. Here’s an example of what I mean: “When is the Pain better? Worse?”, followed by “In the Morning? In the evening? After Resting? After exertion? After any activity?” This theme is followed often in the App, which I think is a great idea. It allows someone who does not understand Spanish to still get key information.

I know what some of you might be thinking, we’re also taught in medicine not to ask close ended questions. But those types of questions will help you get a head start in case the translators are all busy (which often times they are).

The numbers section is self explanatory, translating English numbers to Spanish. The Physical Exam section includes questions on medical history, along with full physical exam directions. It mostly translates commands, which can be particularly useful when you are doing the Cranial Nerve part of your exam.

The pharmacy section includes Instructions, Medications, Quantities, Side Effects, and Suggestions. The most useful section of pharmacy by far is the Instructions section. Its great because you can tell a patient exactly how you want them to take a particular drug, and even write it down for them using this section.

The search section is where this application shines, by far. Refer to my second picture for an example of using the search function. I typed in hurt and those were some of the results that came up. I even typed in sorry, and a whole host of empathetic phrases popped up. Like I said before, this application has thousands of words / phrases, and the search function makes it fun to use this application, and drastically more efficient.