A language-services provider gained a route into healthcare through the patient record

Helping interpretation become part of the hospital record

A language-services provider can deliver a good interpretation session and still struggle to work with hospitals if the result cannot be added to the patient's record.

This project connected an existing interpretation service to hospital patient-record systems. Notes from an interpreted session can reach the record used by the care team, and a patient's recorded language can help the provider find a suitable interpreter before the session begins.

The situation

The provider already had professional interpreters and a working interpretation platform. The missing piece was a reliable connection to the hospital's way of working.

Without that connection, notes from an interpreted session could be difficult for the care team to find. The patient's preferred language was also not available early enough in the matching process, so staff might have to find it manually at the last minute.

The integration was tested across five hospital systems. The first reviewable milestone arrived within six weeks. Because this involved healthcare records, the work had to respect patient identity, permissions, privacy and the rules of each receiving system.

What we built

• A connection using FHIR, a common format for exchanging structured healthcare information.
• Delivery of interpretation notes into the patient's hospital record.
• Retrieval of the patient's recorded language to support interpreter matching.
• A connection to the provider's existing interpretation platform.
• A pilot across five different hospital systems.
• A traceable path from the interpretation session to the record used by the care team.

What changed

After an interpreted session, the note can be stored alongside the rest of the patient's encounter. The hospital team does not have to search a separate inbox or ask the provider to recreate the session later.

The matching process can retrieve the patient's recorded language before an interpreter is assigned. That gives the hospital more useful context earlier, rather than requiring someone to look it up at the last moment.

The provider also gained a more practical route into the hospital market. Its service could work with the record and matching processes hospitals already use, without replacing the interpretation platform that was already working.

How we kept the connection safe and useful

FHIR is simply a standard way for healthcare systems to exchange structured records. The important part of the design was keeping the patient's record protected while creating a reliable route for interpretation information to enter it.

The existing interpretation platform remained in place. That avoided replacing a working service just to solve the connection problem. The integration was tested across several hospital environments, rather than only one simple demonstration.

The note becomes part of the clinical record; it does not make a care decision. Patient language can help with matching, but a responsible person still checks suitability, availability and the details of the request.

The project in one sentence

The integration connected an interpretation service to hospital workflows by moving session notes into the patient record and patient language into interpreter matching.