Ranging from simple bandage and wheelchair to complex blood transfusion kit and programmable pacemaker, medical devices help healthcare professionals treat patients, and help patients live with their illness and conditions. Medical devices that improve the quality of life show steady growth in demand as well as the need for proper translation services, ensuring user manuals and marketing materials are accessible around the world. Here are five tips for translating medical devices.
1. Regulatory compliance
When the lives and well-being of patients are at stake, language rules regarding medical devices are intrinsically stringent. Regulations are the rules manufacturers need to operate by in order to comply with the standards for producing medical devices and providing proper and accurate translations. For most of the cases, they are not merely guidelines but significant penalties levied for non-compliance. Translators must be knowledgeable about the regulations of the target markets and conduct comprehensive research beforehand.
2. Identify target audience
Identifying the target audience is a vital stage of every medical device translation project as a failure to streamline the documents based on the end users would mar the entire process. A professional translation company must ensure that all target users get maximum consideration at the onset of the project, using countries’ simple and standardised pharmaceutical terms for patients and non-professionals. Elite Asia’s native linguists with extensive experience in the pharmaceutical industry are committed to provide quality and professional Multilingual Pharmaceutical Solutions, with short turnaround times and high levels of accuracy.
3. Translate manual book and transcribe instructional videos or animations
Localising medical device manuals does not only ensure the equipment’s validation, but also satisfy the patients with proper healthcare and assure safety standards in hospitals and clinics. For instructional videos and animations, captions are beneficial as they result in greater depth of processing by focusing attention.
4. Application of international standardised symbols
Authorities around the world have set up regulations for medical devices, such as the Medical Devices Regulation (MDR) for Europe and ISO 13485 for the US. Symbols are cost saving, efficient and internationally understood concepts allowing to convey the required information to the medical device users. Using international symbols helps reduce translation clutter and save valuable label space that can be used for information that matters most to healthcare professionals, improving product usability.
5. Keep under constant review
Medical technologies are characterised by a constant flow of innovation and regulations are altering in a timely manner to deal with the changes. Revision of regulations is necessary to reinforce high standards of product quality and safety to ensure a consistently high level of health and safety protection for people using medical devices. Localised content should be reviewed regularly to keep track of the latest updates, with the help of CAT tools, such as translation memory and term base, to ensure consistency of the localised document. Medical translation projects are sensitive as the outcome affects millions of users across the globe. Working with an experienced and reliable translation company like Elite Asia eliminates the chances of a failed translation process.
