A recent Northwestern University study found that most pharmacies cannot provide comprehensive instructions on prescription medications.  The study conducted by the Feinberg school of Medicine at Northwestern University surveyed 764 pharmacies in four states. National chains were also included in the survey. The results show that 57% of those pharmacies surveyed could not provide comprehensive instructions for medications in Spanish. The risk of not properly communicating with Spanish speaking patients could lead to under dosing or over dosing and mismanagement of medical conditions.

A recent Chicago Tribune article tells a story of an 8-year old girl and how her mother didn’t understand the prescription information causing an issue in how the antibiotic was administered.  Much to my astonishment (horror might be more precise) the article discusses how pharmacies all across the country are using automated translation solutions to provide prescription information. Researchers looked at 76 medicine labels generated by 13 different computer programs used by the pharmacies in question. The overall error rate was 50% percent. The most alarming part of the study showed that the translation output was often a mix of English and Spanish. The Tribune story gives a few examples:

“For example, instructions to take iron “once” a day would mean one time. But in Spanish, once means 11. It could be harmful for a patient to take 11 doses of iron a day, the study noted.

Misspellings also created errors. The study found that instead of the word boca, which means “mouth” in Spanish, poca, which means “little,” was used.

Other words and phrases — including “dropperfuls,” “take with food,” “apply topically,” “for 7 days” and “apply to affected areas” — were not translated into Spanish at all.”

This is unacceptable. In my opinion it is a far worse situation to offer a “poorly-conceived” solution than no solution at all. If a patient is provided with translated instructions from an institution like a pharmacy,  you would expect it to be accurate.  We would expect no less in English. Wouldn’t it be odd to discover one or two words in the middle of your instructions that were in a foreign language?

Automatic translation or machine translation has its place in our industry but that place is certainly not in a pharmacy or any place life may be at risk from the consequences of a poor translation.

The proper solution would be the implementation of a content management system cataloging all of the various indications and warnings, having the materials properly translated and then making that content available to pharmacists for proper distribution to patients.  This would be a hybrid of translation automation and proper human translation. We call this Machine translation with a human engine.