Voice-assisted treatments with Triaphon
What exactly is Triaphone?
Triaphon is a non-profit organization (gGmbH) that aims to break down language barriers in the medical field in order to ensure needs-based medical care for foreign-language patients. Thanks to our interpreting hotline, medical facilities can receive low-threshold language mediation in nine languages (Arabic, Bulgarian, Farsi/Dari, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Turkish, Ukrainian and Vietnamese) around the clock. In our opinion, language mediation in the healthcare sector that is available at all times is an absolute necessity. Triaphon has been campaigning for this since its foundation and is also politically committed to it.
How did you get together?
Two medical professionals, Dr. Lisanne Knop and Dr. Korbinian Fischer, founded Triaphon six years ago to close a gap in care with the simplest possible means. The lack of availability of qualified ad-hoc interpreters in their daily work, especially in emergency situations, gave them the idea of setting up Triaphon – a medical interpreting hotline. Triaphon was developed to support all medical staff in communicating with patients with language barriers and thus improve medical care for these patients.
How important is language in the doctor/patient relationship? What effects can a dysfunctional communication relationship between the two have?
Effective communication is essential for almost every patient contact (diagnosis, treatment, prevention, etc.) and is the basis of modern medical care. In the treatment of patients with a migration or refugee background, almost every patient contact leads to delays in otherwise routine processes and treatment is not targeted. For non-German-speaking patients, there is an increase in misuse, underuse and overuse. In addition to these aspects, it should be noted that inadequate communication leads to negative economic consequences (opportunity costs, personnel costs, material costs) and can have potentially harmful effects on health.
How does your work function? How many people are you now?
Triaphon is organized decentrally and has its headquarters in Berlin. The organizational team now consists of seven employees. From shift supervision to customer care and the implementation of some projects, the tasks are very varied. But the heart of Triaphon is the large community of dedicated multilingual people who interpret for medical staff at a wide range of institutions.
The approximately 150 language mediators we train are available around the clock. Triaphon is a web application for our language mediators, which they can use to register their own accounts for on-call times. The telephone system is connected to this web application – the digital shift management system – so that when a call comes in and the desired language is selected, all those language mediators who are currently registered in the system as “available for interpreting” are called.
How often are your services used?
Since Triaphon was founded (2017), patients with language barriers have been given a voice 45,000 times in interpreted calls. The use of Triaphon is growing from year to year, we are currently at around 1,300 interpreted calls per month, in 2021 we were still at around 900 calls.
Can you see a difference between cities and more rural regions? Or a west-east divide?
Yes, there is indeed a difference between large cities and more rural regions. Triaphon is used most in large conurbations. That’s where the majority of our customers are located. Berlin is a good example: the proportion of residents with a migration background in Berlin is already over 35%, and over 25% of our medical customers and most of our language mediators are based here.
Have you already noticed positive changes in your work with doctors?
Definitely. The positive feedback we receive from medical facilities shows us that medical staff are happy to use the service. The results of our user survey also show that medical staff find Triaphon useful and makes their daily work easier.
From the patient’s point of view, the use of Triaphon leads to a strengthening of the patient’s role. This is because patients can only be involved in the diagnostic and treatment process through effective communication and information.
How can people join you?
Interested medical facilities should contact us at anfrage@triaphon.org
with us. Depending on the language mediation needs of the facility, we will send out a suitable offer.
You can find more information about Triaphon at: https://triaphon.org/
Before using Triaphon for the first time, medical staff receive training on the most important aspects of using Triaphon. In addition, our interpreting hotline is subject to a charge. By charging per minute, we are able to cover our running costs for staff, language mediators, IT, rent, etc. However, we are still dependent on additional funding to be able to offer Triaphon in its current form.
What are your wishes for the future?
We want to strengthen the cohesion of our society and counteract discrimination. In the very busy and sensitive healthcare sector, forms and effects of discrimination are relatively common. From the outset, we have been working at a political level to ensure that language mediation costs in a medical context are covered by health insurance companies. In our opinion, simplifying access to language mediation for medical professionals by covering the costs would significantly promote awareness of the issues of interculturality, language barriers and medicine in medical facilities.
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