Medical Translation Insight

As healthcare goes mobile, lots of questions emerge around mHealth

2013-05-22T09:54:00.000-04:00

These days, mobile health (mHealth) seems to be everywhere. As the use of health text messaging, mobile phone apps, remote monitoring, and portable sensors has expanded, they have changed the way healthcare is being delivered in the U.S. and in Europe.But with rapid change and innovation come questions, false starts, and regulatory uncertainties. Just like when drug and device companies (and FDA

Focusing on the patient - ISPOR 2013

2013-05-21T10:10:00.000-04:00

The annual meeting of the International Society of Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research (ISPOR) is currently underway in New Orleans. ForeignExchange is well represented by Janis Shea and Sonja Jacobsen. Despite a poor layout (sessions and exhibitors are spread-out over 3 floors), the conference is once again very well attended. More than 3,000 participants from 50+ countries are attending

e-labeling, e-labeling, e-verywhere

2013-05-20T10:29:00.000-04:00

For years, medical device manufacturers were wondering if e-labeling was ever going to become a reality in the EU. Then, earlier this year, the seemingly impossible did happen. And now it looks like every regulatory authority across Europe is joining the fray. Eisner Safety reports that the UK MHRA (Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency) "released a Guidance on EU Commission

Changes to European IVD regulations inching forward

2013-04-08T10:35:00.000-04:00

Everybody is talking about the next revision to the IVDD. We recently wrote about how upcoming EU IVD regulations are likely to cause translation headaches for device manufacturers. But the regulations are far from final and much can still change. The current state of the IVD regulation proposal is described in a good bit of detail on Erik Vollebregt's blog, medicaldeviceslegal. His

Terrific collection of terminology, style resources for medical translators

2013-03-01T10:26:00.001-05:00

Anybody who is active in and around medical translation knows how hard it can be to learn and stay abreast of medical language. Even for those of us who have been at it for a long time, terminology, abbreviations, and jargon are a constant challenge. In her article Hints and Links for Medical Translators, Palma Chatonnet-Marton collected an impressive list of resources that every medical

Vida Vibrante wants to be "relatable voice" for Hispanics in search of bilingual health information

2013-02-28T10:43:00.001-05:00

Latinos are the fastest growing minority population in the U.S., comprising around 50 million people. Despite the fact that some in the drug & device space are asleep when it comes to Hispanics, more and more bilingual and bicultural resources are becoming available. There is Medgadget Español, Latina Wellness, and now Vida Vibrante. As The New York Times reports, the site looks to fill the void

Commas save lives

2013-02-27T09:00:00.000-05:00

This is off-topic but funny in a language-geeky kind of way. Enjoy! Have a few more minutes? Take a look at a couple of our other articles:Typos? What, me worry?5 minutes before the crashPeriodic table of typefacesSharp spikes near groynes ForeignExchange Translations provides specialized medical translation services to the world's largest medical device and pharmaceutical companies.

Combining online, offline efforts in a multilingual world

2013-02-26T09:30:00.000-05:00

Global gateways to multilingual web sites are difficult. John Yunker has built a whole business around giving advice to corporations around this and related issues. (As an aside, if you haven't yet subscribed to his Blog, Global by Design, you should!) Thanks to efforts by John and orthers, global companies are generally doing a good job with this. But even the mightiest global titans struggle

ForeignExchange scores high client satisfaction marks

2013-02-25T09:00:00.000-05:00

For the past twelve years, ForeignExchange Translations has conducted annual surveys of our clients to determine what they think of our processes, our quality, our services, and our people. This important information allows us to gain valuable insights into how we are doing, how we can improve, and how we can continue to build strong business partnerships with our valuable customers. This year,

Outlook for medical device industry: all eyes on Asia, BRIC

2013-02-22T12:44:00.001-05:00

Earlier this year, Emergo Group conducted an annual survey of the medical device industry. The responses from roughly 3,500 device professionals (mostly QA/RA) were collected and tallied, and the results are now available here [PDF]. The survey contains a lot of valuable insight. While not shocking it's interesting to see that medical device firms remain firmly focused on Asia and BRIC

The 5+1 things that will make clients love you

2013-02-21T09:00:00.000-05:00

In 1912 L.L. Bean launched his newly formed clothing company with his Golden Rule: "Sell good merchandise at a reasonable profit; treat your customers like human beings and they will come back for more." Sounds simple, "treat your customers like human beings", but in today's world of email and workflow systems it's not always as easy as it looks and unless a company has a relentless drive for

DiffPDF compares PDF files, finds differences

2013-02-18T09:49:00.002-05:00

Working with source PDFs is a fact of life for medical translators. A typical dossier, for instance, may contain thousands of pages that are uneditable, usually because the source documents were created a long time ago and faxed or simply converted to a graphic format. Where it get's "fun", though, is when a client sends multiple versions of a document, asking the translator to identify updates

Is translation a waste of paper?

2013-02-14T09:00:00.000-05:00

And now it's time for some soul-searching.At ForeignExchange, we firmly believe that our translations save lives: If our translation mistakenly contains 10 ml instead of 1 ml, a patient could die. Having said, we are also realists. Are all of the IFUs that we're translating really getting read? No, of course not. In fact, that's a good thing - I know I wouldn't want my surgeon to refer to the IFU

Linguistic validation for PRO and QoL instruments

2013-02-13T10:30:00.000-05:00

Translation and linguistic validation is a fundamental part of the patient reported outcome (PRO) instrument development process. When properly done, this process ensures that PRO data pooled from international clinical trials has scientific validity, and hence credibility with regulators and the marketplace. (Regulators, including the FDA and EMA, increasingly require that fully compliant

The death of WYSIWYG?

2013-02-12T09:00:00.001-05:00

WYSIWYG. It's been called the perfect way to write, where what you see on the screen exactly matches what you get on paper, and modern WYSIWYG authoring tools are extremely close to that ideal. Yet despite fonts that are antialiased and image files that appear in full 24-bit glory when inserted, everything is not well. Why? For one thing, users struggle to make sense of all of the functionality

Is India losing its appeal for clinical researchers?

2013-02-08T12:52:00.002-05:00

The value of emerging countries in delivering cost-effective patient recruitment is well documented. However concerns remain about data quality, GCP compliance, extrapolation of trial outcomes, and regulatory hurdles. But rather than smoothing things out for clinical research sponsors, Indian regulators, in particular, are setting the bar higher and higher. Despite sponsors' efforts around

Big changes to medical device regulations in Russia

2013-02-07T07:30:00.000-05:00

The Russian Ministry of Health has put in place new rules regarding medical device classification, importation, and adverse event handling. The revised regulations took effect January 1, 2013. The changes are fairly comprehensive. MassDevice has a good overview. Here are the high points:Registration certificates need to include different informationDevice manufacturers must now designate an

Pigs DO fly! elabeling comes to Europe

2013-02-06T09:00:00.000-05:00

The adoption of e-labeling (i.e., the inclusion of digital instructions with medical devices) has been very slow in Europe. Because the European Commission's medical device directive was written over 20 years ago, and e-labelling was not even thinkable back then, Europe has lagged behind the U.S. and Canada. Things are about to change in Europe. Commission Regulation (EU) No. 207/2012 on

It's true - I judge you when you use poor grammar

2013-02-05T11:40:00.001-05:00

OK, I admit it: I'm a grammar stickler and have little tolerance for people who mix up "your" and "you're" or can't distinguish between "to" and "too". Mistakes happen - and I know I make plenty of them! - but these kinds of grammar issues just jump off a page at me.If you are like me, then I have a terrific little book for you. I Judge You When You Use Poor Grammar is a fun little book that

7 localization tools - free or almost free

2013-02-04T09:05:00.001-05:00

When it comes to buying translation tools, it's easy for medical translators to spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars/euros/pounds. So I was glad to see the following tools listed in Jost Zetzsche's Tool Box Newsletter:CheckMate - a free, cross-platform QA tool from the Okapi family of toolsCodeZapper - powerful eliminator of underlying codes in Word documents (we covered an earlier

Will 'Side Effects' have side effects for big pharma?

2013-02-01T10:41:00.002-05:00

Big Pharma has enjoyed years of positive publicity in the mainstream media through large financial expenditures toward lobbying and advertising; indeed, the industry may spend more money on self-promotion than it does on product research. Now, however, a new kind of exposure is looming on the horizon with the upcoming release of "Side Effects," a Steve Soderbergh movie that opens in a few days. (

The amazing race to a universal translator

2013-01-29T09:00:00.000-05:00

Ever since the days of Star Trek, the idea of a universal translator has captivated popular culture. During the original TV show, the "UT" provided real-time translation of spoken languages by scanning brain-wave frequencies. In addition, the computers of the U.S.S. Enterprise had translation capabilities built into its system software. Fun stuff but until recently UTs were the domain of

Pharma looks to emerging markets for growth; medical translators should look to therapeutics

2013-01-28T08:57:00.001-05:00

The other day, we wrote about how rising drug costs present a challenge to the global economy - possibly even to medical translation professionals. The article was based on The Global Use of Medicines: Outlook Through 2016 [PDF], a 2012 report from the IMS.The report contains a wealth of great information - if you haven't downloaded it, you really should. One key theme in the report is the

What's French for 'hashtag'?

2013-01-25T10:30:00.000-05:00

The French are notoriously strict when it comes to their language. They don't want American slang corrupting what's generally considered to be one of the most beautiful languages in the world. They actually have an official government agency that dictates this thing, and makes it law, as opposed to the American linguistic Wild West, with our YOLOs and hip-hop and "booty calls" and "hashtags."

Clients' quality expectations remain high

2013-01-24T07:30:00.000-05:00

Our poll around the question of "Are quality expectations declining among translation buyers?" attracted a ton of interest. After 1,000 votes, the answer seems to be: No. We received lots of great input and feedback. Many of the comments were informed by personal experience. Here is an example:"In my experience, pharmaceutical companies are the most demanding clients, they usually commission