Selected Patient Information Resources in Asian Languages (SPIRAL)

The project aims to increase electronic access to health information in Asian languages for consumers and health care providers of the South Cove Community Health Center and its affiliates. The South Cove Community Health Center is a primary and preventive health centre for Asian-Americans. It's mission is to improve the health and well-being of Asian-Americans in Massachusetts, with a special focus on the medically underserved, by providing high quality, community-based health care and programmes which are accessible and linguistically and culturally appropriate for these populations.

The SPIRAL website provides consumer information in the languages of the community served, specifically Chinese, Hmong, Khmer, Korean, Laotian, Thai, or Vietnamese. The website makes available documents created by non-profit health agencies and organisations on a wide variety of health topics. All documents are intended for public use and may be distributed for not-for-profit purposes.

Asian-language health information featured on SPIRAL has been selected for inclusion based upon the following criteria:

• english-language versions are available for comparison;
• information is developed and maintained by authoritative sources such as government and state agencies, universities, hospitals, and non-profit health agencies; and
• the information is recommended for inclusion by multi-lingual subject specialists.

The website is segmented by language and by subject, a user - possibly a patient, doctor or other caregiver - can search for documents in an Asian language on topics such as asthma, diabetes, nutrition, substance abuse, and HIV/AIDS. A native speaker of an Asian language could go to the main website, select his/her language, and then search for the information that was needed. Material is also provided in English so that an English-speaking physician or caregiver can see what patients are reading. This aims to ensure that non-Asian language-speaking physicians or caregivers are able to direct their patients to correct sources of information, in languages the patient can understand.

The website also provides website links to a wide variety of resources for individuals and health care providers such Asian health websites, Asian community health centres, and National Network of Libraries in Medicine resources.

Health, Technology

According to the project website "the National Network of Libraries in Medicine funded the SPIRAL project because it fulfills an important imperative of the health sciences information network - providing health care professionals and the public access to convenient, rapid access to medical resources.