Abstract
Becoming ill in a foreign country can be very worrisome for patients with the lack of knowledge about the medical system in the country and the difficulties in understanding the language. I have personally experienced visiting an emergency unit of a hospital in Bangkok. Fortunately, I was helped by a Japanese interpreter and a physician with experience studying in Japan despite of the fact that it was nighttime, and was still able to receive medical care without much difficulty. In Japan, however, there are only a few hospitals that have such system of treating foreign patients.The number of foreign patients at our hospital has increased recently. Due to the difficulty in communication, medical consultations as well as other patient care have become more complicated and stressful. Our hospital has also started accepting patients visiting Japan for medical tourism, and not all of them have interpreters. In addition, considering the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo, our hospital has decided to actively practice medical care for foreign athletes and visitors. Thus, it has become necessary for us to develop a communication-assisting tool for smooth multilingual translation.
