I caught an interesting interview on the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) this morning between the host (Andy Barrie) and Andrew Deonarine, lead programmer for OmniClin. Participating in the Imagine Cup 2006, OmniClin has developed a Pocket PC (and PC) spoken word translator for the medical field. Essentially, a health care worker will ask the device a question. The software analyzer will then extract the basic meaning of the question and match that against a set of preset standard questions and will return the most similar phrase. The software will then stitch together a translated audio version of the question for the patient. The patient can then answer and the process working in reverse will provide an answer in the original language.
The software has gone through some clinical trials and currently works in about 20 languages although it has unlimited potential. It also comes with visual tools (such as a pain scale) to provide collect additional information or for situation where the speech analyzer fails to understand the patient.
Note: You will need the RealPlayer to listen to the interview.