A tool that reduces language barriers receives the Athena Prize 2024
The Athena Prize 2024 is awarded to Care to Translate, a digital translation tool adapted for healthcare. The tool was developed to give patients with different language backgrounds the opportunity to communicate with healthcare providers in an efficient way. The purpose of the Athena prize is to draw attention to and reward research and innovations that have taken place in collaboration between academia, healthcare and industry.
The idea for Care to Translate was born when Linus Kullänger Schalling was studying medicine and did an internship at a health center in a migrant-dense area. He noticed the negative consequences language barriers had on communication between patients and healthcare professionals, and started building an app. The app was launched on Facebook in 2017 and quickly spread via social media.
“When Linus showed the pilot version of the app, it was obvious that this can be very beneficial for both patients and healthcare professionals”, says Martin Schalling, Professor at the Department of Molecular Medicine and Surgery, Karolinska Institutet, and one of the founders of Care to Translate. “The app has developed into an advanced digital language support, which today can handle translation between 45 different languages, and has more than 700,000 users in roughly 180 countries“.
Prize motivation
"This year's winner identified a solid problem in healthcare and created a ground-breaking innovation that provides clear patient benefit. In collaboration with academia and industry, they break language and cultural barriers with the goal of raising the quality of care, increasing patient safety and contributing to more equal and accessible care for everyone."