BUS3ENT Assessment Solution: IndoCare Business Venture

Executive Summary

IndoCare is a culturally responsive application which has been designed to fill the communication gap between the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and the healthcare providers in Australia. Language barrier significantly impacts the quality of care given to the Indigenous patients, and hospitals often lack interpreters or Aboriginal Liaison Officers. This makes the indigenous patient population suffer. To address this issue, the IndoCare app aims to provides a two-way real time communication platform, where the Indigenous people can communicate verbally using their voice, and this voice will be then converted/translated into English so the healthcare providers can listen to it and understand it. Similarly, the response from the health care providers will also be translated back into the Indigenous language. In this way, the communication from both ends could be facilitated and health related barriers can be reduced for the Indigenous population. This report discusses the business model, differentiation and innovation, the market feasibility, viability and desirability and a business model canvas to explain the resources, stakeholders and other key aspects of the venture.

Introduction

IndoCare is a mobile facilitates communication platform, which has been specifically designed to address the issue of linguistics and cultural diversity, creating a gap between the Indigenous people and the healthcare services. This app is uniquely designed to facilitate communication between the Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (Indigenous) communities and the hospitals all across Australia. This application aims to support the patients of culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds to communicate through voice message, regarding their health condition, in their own language or dialect, which is further translated into English language buy the application, to assist the healthcare workers understand the message of the Indigenous patient. Alternatively, this platform will translate the response of the healthcare workers back to the Indigenous language or dialect so that the patients can understand the message/response of the healthcare professional.

The app primarily considers the Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population, as they face a barrier while accessing healthcare services due to a language barrier, which creates a gap and hinders the conversation between the patient and the healthcare provider, impacting the quality of health care services delivered to the patient (Li, 2017). A lack of onsite interpreters, underutilization of interpreters or unavailability of interpreters on are a few reasons which leads to the miscommunication between patients and healthcare workers (Ralph et al., 2017). Furthermore, the healthcare workers also imitate a lack of skills in effectively working with interpreters. Healthcare workers have also reported a lack of skills in providing culturally respectful and safe care to the Aboriginal and Torres Straits Islander patients due to language barrier and communication gap (Ralph et al., 2023). Current studies still highlight a gap in communication and accessibility of healthcare services by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people due to language barrier (Rahman et al., 2023), which highlights the need of a more convenient, accessible platform to facilitate the communication between Indigenous patients and healthcare providers.

Self-reflection

The idea came through brainstorming, and mapping the connections between thought and experiences. In the past, I came across multiple studies highlighting the issue about health inequalities faced by the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Australia, where one of the barrier is the communication barrier due to language differences between patients and healthcare staff. To access credible information, I used online databases such as Google Scholar and EBSCO host and found relevant articles related to the issue. I used filters for database search such as specific keywords, including language barrier, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health inequalities.

After recognizing communication as a problem, I started researching about possible technologies which can facilitate voice translation or speech recognition. For this, I used the same databases including Google Scholar and EBSCO. I found articles focusing on voice translation, language interpretation, speech recognition, translation etc. From here, my perception of designing an online voice supported platform strengthened, and I started mapping the idea from visualization into reality.

Through the lens of design thinking, the thought processed by building connections between patient needs, main issue and designing an online platform which can be used in user friendly hospitals. I reviewed the “Closing the Gap” initiative, VACCHO and Reconciliation Australia to strengthen the ethical perspectives. I further conducted a market analysis and identified the possible competitors such as CALD Assist (Silvera‐Tawil et al., 2018). Then I identified the potential stakeholders for the project and contacted them to bring the visualization of the project into reality.

Innovation and differentiation

IndoCare is an innovative venture, because of multiple reasons. The first reason is that IndoCare offers a two-way conversation through a real time voice capture and interpretation of the voice in to the translated form for the other user. Unlike the text-based applications or other passive forms of cultural training, IndoCare is unique, as it further smoothens the conversation through verbal medium, hence removing the barriers raised due to written form of communication.

The second reason is that this application has the potential to reduce language barrier, in hospital settings where Aboriginal Liaison Officers or interpreters are not available (Withall et al., 2021). This app is specially for hospital use, where patients will come and use this tool for further communication, and the health care provision process can be continued and not impacted by the absence of Aboriginal Liaison officers or interpreters. This application can be used at hospital bedsides, triage desks or during the consultation sessions with the doctors. Moreover, this application can translate English verbal message into multiple languages used by the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.

These combinations altogether can fill the potential gap in the Australian healthcare and tech sector, which can be used even in the absence of interpreters and Aboriginal Liaison Offices so that the delivery of healthcare service is not delayed and the communication between the healthcare provider and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander patients is not delayed. Moreover, IndoCare does not require any pre booking or hiring someone to use/operate the application in the hospital context, it can be solely operated and used by the indigenous people and the healthcare workers, due to the simplicity of its interface and accessibility across all the hospitals, pharmacies, clinics and other health care centres in Australia. Therefore, these aspects make the IndoCare application unique, innovative and differentiated among other communication and translation applications or tools.