While hospitals may eventually standardize on one clinical vocabulary, they won't have that luxury with their patients, who bring a dizzying array of languages and dialects to the hospital room.

Interpretation looms as an important and exacting service, crucial to patient safety. If caregivers aren't fluent in a language, then interpreters are essential to translate patient and family communication. However, it's expensive to fully staff such services and transport them where they're needed.

Many healthcare organizations are hoping that technology can play a role in bridging the language gap.

In one such example, two Bay area hospitals last month began testing video telephony services that soon will enable them to share language interpretation services.

In initial tests, San Francisco General Hospital was able to use video telephony for the first time to connect to interpreters at Alameda County Medical Center in Oakland.

Video interpretation makes it easier to schedule sessions in which interpreters help convey information between caregivers and patients who don't speak English.

The two public hospital systems hope to decrease interpretation costs for the facilities and maintain – and perhaps increase – the level of service to patients while cutting the amount of time patients must wait for care, said Janice Chin, director of interpretive services for Alameda County.

Video conferencing is an effective compromise that helps interpreters do a better job, she said. It provides visual cues that can't be seen when interpreters just listen to conversations on the phone, she said. And it enables interpreters to increase efficiency by eliminating the need to be physically present at consultations.

About 20 ambulatory care clinics operated by Alameda County have been equipped with video conferencing technology, from Tandberg, a provider of video-communication products in Oslo and Cisco Systems, which provides call management technology.

Chin said it's taken about two years to provide services to all the Alameda County clinics, and she estimates it will take a year for San Francisco General's clinics to be similarly equipped. So far, three clinics have been readied for video telephony.

A dispatcher in Alameda County's interpreter services department coordinates the service, making sure the appropriate interpreter is available during a scheduled consultation between a caregiver and non-English speaking patient.

The system currently uses Internet Protocol technology through wired ports, but the organizations plan to experiment with wireless technology soon, Chin said.

The two hospitals will continue to work together to standardize technology and procedures to streamline the work of dispatchers, Chin said. Using Tandberg video-conferencing technology and the capabilities of the Cisco CallManager IP video telephony system, the hospitals will increase efficiency and speed scheduling, she said.