A 5-year-old Clearwater company has carved out a powerful niche providing interpreter services to non-English-speaking patients and doctors in hospitals nationwide. The firm supplies live interpreters online at the press of a button, appearing on iPad or other tablets’ screens at a patient’s bedside to handle often-critical conversations with medical personnel. The company refers to this service as its “Uber-like app” because it efficiently routes a hospital’s need for a specific interpreter through its Web-based system to the best available person.

[…] Stratus Video was smart to focus its technology service at the health care industry. Hospitals and clinics are required by law to provide interpreter services to patients who are not proficient in English. Hospitals have relied in the past — and many still do — on live interpreters who are either on staff or on call as contractors to show up and help translate medical matters between patients (and their families) and medical staffs.Online, any hospital using Stratus Video’s system would have 24/7 access, face to face with an interpreter via tablet screen, at a patient’s bedside, typically within minutes. More.

See: Tampa Bay Times

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