Remote interpreting services are on the rise to support doctors and limited English proficient (LEP) patients in the shift to telehealth.

Telehealth has become a familiar concept to many people in the context of Covid-19 pandemic. Telehealth, in definition, is the use of communication technologies to deliver and facilitate healthcare services remotely.

 According to Multilingual, the US population who don’t use English as their daily language accounts for 20%. This provokes considerable problems related to language when they access hospitals and healthcare systems. Due to the limitation in face-to-face communication amid Covid-19, it is important to hospitals and healthcare systems to position telehealth. However, video conferencing platforms like Zoom, GoToMeeting, and Webex are not the good choices because of the security and difficulty in interference of interpreters. As a result, they adopted over-the-phone interpretation (OPI) and video remote interpreting (VRI) as the ideal language solutions. 

In the shift to telehealth, medical interpreters are considered as a bridge between doctors and LEP patients. Those interpreters as well as OPI or VRI promote telehealth to communities in rural areas, where it is difficult to find on-site interpreters quickly. More importantly, patients can access care with the highest level of accuracy in interpreting and pay only for their personal services, without hidden fees. 

It can be said that when the COVID-19 pandemic eventually recedes, telehealth is still popular to healthcare service users. For that reason, remote interpreting in telehealth also becomes essential than ever. Amid the pandemic, many businesses and organizations have begun to use interpreter services remotely. In this context, we, as well as linguistic professionals are fully confident to provide the best language solution services for everyone.