HealthTap, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based virtual care services provider, has expanded its platform to facilitate multi-participant virtual consultations with medical translation and interpretation services.
According to HealthTap, the service removes language barriers and expands access to immediate care to HealthTap users in 174 countries around the world.
The latest version of the company’s Health Operating System (HOPE), supports live group consults, enabling multiple participants to join a private video/text/voice chat in real time on mobile devices or personal computers in a secure, encrypted environment. It allows medical professionals, caregivers and patients to call on specialists from HealthTap’s network of more than 100,000 U.S. physicians.
In a press release, the company notes that by enabling interpreters to join virtual consultations, it opens the door to virtual healthcare for world travelers, family members that don’t speak English, and other people for whom language barriers are obstacles in getting care.
The platform currently supports, in addition to English, 21 languages, including American Sign Language, Spanish, Cantonese (Chinese), Mandarin (Chinese), Arabic, Hindi, Punjabi, Russian, Somali, Tigrinya and Urdu.
The new group consults capability also enables customers to add specialists, family members, and caregivers to their health conversations.
“By enabling doctors to bring together specialists, family members, and even translators, HealthTap is increasing access while simultaneously providing deeper, more comprehensive and more personalized care,” Dariush Saghafi, M.D., a neurologist from Parma Ohio, said in a prepared statement.
