A Framework to Guide ICT Solution for Language Barrier in South African Healthcare

Literature Review

The advancement in ICT solutions has over the years increasingly managed to improve an efficient distribution of healthcare services to people in rural areas. According to Iftikhar., Ishaq, Ahmad, & Fatima (2010), health informatics play a vital role in the integration of ICT solutions for healthcare purposes. This includes data storage and retrieval (Rodger, 2015). Despite advancements in ICT solutions, language barriers have been shown to affect the quality of healthcare received by limited English proficiency patients. “Language is a mirror of the mind in a deep and significant sense. It is a product of human intelligence” (Chomsky, 1975 p. 4; Idalovichi, 2014). In late 1999, the Institute of Medicine highlighted the effects of language barriers in its report on medical errors and patient safety (Kohn, Corrigan, & Donaldson, 1999). Error rates were higher when physicians and patients spoke different languages (Gandhi, Burstin, Cook, Puopolo, Haas, Brennan, & Bates, 1998). Woloshin, Bickell, Schwartz, Gany, & Welch (1995) associate language barriers and inaccurate with errors in medical history and misdiagnosing of medical conditions.