Jerrit Tan is the CEO of Canopy Apps (https://www.withcanopy.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.
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 https://www.withcanopy.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.