Sunday, 12 February 2012
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Healthcare IT
Debate swirls over medical records language in Taiwan
A debate about the language used for medical records has heated up in Taiwanese society.
Ninety-eight per cent of Taiwan’s population is of Han Chinese ethnicity. However, most western medicine doctors in Taiwan keep medical records in English. Recently, a few doctors, scholars and medical judges have been pushing for the Department of Health to standardise medical terminology in the Chinese language; and a legislator is proposing a law mandating the use of Chinese in medical records.
The proponents for adopting Chinese for medical records say that many doctors’ level of English is often not good enough to ensure the quality of English language medical records. Also, English records are opaque to many patients who can only read Chinese and as a result, they are often falsified and disputes arise easily. Judges also complain that it makes judging difficult.
However, some medical records experts argue that the language hardly matters with the quality of records; instead, the heavy workload of doctors is to blame. Besides, most patients are not able to understand the terms and descriptions even if they are written in Chinese.
Opponents for record localisation argue that the cost of change management could potentially overrun any benefits the change might bring. They say a more realistic approach is to improve the doctors’ English writing levels. There are also recommendations that medical schools should set up special courses or workshops on medical record writing.
A commentary from a leading newspaper argues that medical records are not only a tool for doctors to communicate, but also for patients and their family members to stay informed. Although they might not comprehend specific medical terminology in Chinese, it is still much easier for them to get a complete picture of the situation.
The same commentary also lists that in countries such as Germany, France and Japan, medical records are all kept in their own languages. Besides, with computerisation, typing Chinese is not necessarily more difficult and error-prone than typing English. The paper prompts the government to set up a committee to standardise medical terminology in Chinese.
There are also calls for a more thorough review before a decision is made. With more Taiwanese residents travelling and living in Mainland China, some argue that the different Chinese translations of the same terminology should also be factored in. Due to political and practical reasons, standardising terminology with mainland China is not yet feasible.
Medical education in Taiwan is conducted mainly in Chinese. And in fact, there is no regulation at the moment and doctors can choose to write medical records in English or Chinese, though many computerised systems now only support English.
Chinese medicine doctors, unlikely their western medicine counterparts, keep their records only in the Chinese language.
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