Mar 16, 2015
Jerrit Tan is the CEO
of Canopy Apps (www.canopyapps.com). Growing up in
an immigrant family, starting at the age of 10, he played the role
of interpreter for his parents and grandparents during doctor
visits. These experiences inspire him to develop technology to help
improve and lower the cost of healthcare delivery for the 30
million Americans who do not speak English.
Prior to Canopy, he was at Google. Today, he lives in New York City
with his wife and his dog.
www.linkedin.com/in/jerrittan
00:00 Jerrit discusses the origin of Canopy Apps.
00:35 Jerrit’s time at Google and how his skillset played into his
role as CEO.
1:45 What Canopy Apps is exactly.
2:00 Canopy creates technology to help patients who don’t speak
English interact with their doctors that do.
3:35 Best practices for dealing with non-English speaking
patients.
4:00 By LAW, healthcare providers are required to call interpreters
when caring for non-English speaking patients. However,
interpreters are only called 15% of the time they are needed.
8:45 “As a doctor, you can offer the greatest level of care, but if
you can’t communicate even the simple things to your patient, that
patient will be more likely to be readmitted for care.”
11:00 Canopy App uses professional translators to get thousands of
commonly used medical phrases translated accurately into hundreds
of different languages.
13:00 The dangers of using a translator app like Google translate
to communicate with patients.
20:00 Why hospitals don’t normally hire their own interpreters, and
instead often rely on telephone interpreters.
28:20 “Improving communication has been proven to improve health
outcomes.”
28:40 The data that Canopy App can show healthcare providers to
improve patient interaction and ultimately health outcomes.
30:25 When Canopy App is used for Health Systems vs. single
hospitals.
33:00 The statistics for non-English speaking patients vs. English
speaking patients.
37:45 You can learn more about Canopy Apps at www.canopyapps.com
and download a free trial version of the app on both the iTunes App
Store and the Android Apps store by searching Canopy Medical
Translator.