International healthcare terminology is most often based on international standards such as ICD 10 and ICF. In some cases, the terminology of certain countries has become de facto standard in other countries such as SNOMED® CT terminology.

The meaning and relations of health terms are universal, but the language of terminology is naturally very different. This challenge has prompted the need for translation of international terminology systems to local language. This task has shown to be not only a comprehensive, but also a complicated task, since any translation is dependent on the context of the term and presumes homogeneity in all the data.

The HealthTerm® translation application supports the translation workflow, ensures homogeneity, documents the sources of the translations, and makes the translation far more efficient.

Roles for translation
In order to obtain certainty for correct translation of any translation task, every single translation must be translated, reviewed
and accepted by the relevant parties. HealthTerm® Translation supports this role-based workflow, which may be configured
as needed (see figure).

Workflow-based translation
Initially, the translation manager is able to select a chosen subset of a terminology database and divide this subset into
selected batches, which may be distributed between different translators.

When a translator selects a term for translation, the translator automatically receives the next term with the status of translation
and a highlighted list of previous translations of similar terms. It is also possible to search in source material such as medical dictionaries, internal manuals etc.

When a translation is done, the translator is able to make comments and link to any source material that has been used in the translation, i.e. a dictionary on a given page. When the translation is reviewed, the reviewer is able to see the sources of the translation and attached comments. Again, the reviewer is able to make supplementary comments and new links to sources, which may be reviewed in the final approval of the translation of the term.

Translation process:
HealthTerm® automatically helps translators by showing all similar translations that the system knows of, as well as the status of
these. This ensures that the individual terms are as far as possible identically translated in all occurrences. If at a later stage the
Editorial Board finds that there has been a general translation error, it is possible to undertake a comprehensive correction of all these translations at once.

During the translation process it is possible for all involved parties to comment on the translation at the individual steps, and as
there is also a full history and logging of processes, it is easy for all parties to monitor and manage the process for every single
concept.

Translation statistics
HealthTerm® enables the monitoring of the individual translation processes on an ongoing basis via the accompanying statistics
module, which indicates the number of concepts and terms located at any given time in the various workflow steps, divided between the various batches and persons.