NEW YORK, Sept. 7 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Bowne Global Solutions (BGS), a leading provider of interpretation and translation services, announced today that it has signed a contract with NHS Direct to provide England’s telephonic health advice and information service with interpreters 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The contract provides a framework allowing other NHS organizations to use BGS at common pricing and levels of service.
Under the terms of the contract, if a patient calls NHS Direct and does not speak English, he or she will be linked to a BGS interpreter who will translate the confidential communications between patient and nurse. Some of the languages that will be in demand for interpretation are Punjabi, Arabic, Kurdish, French, Turkish and Bengali. Five hundred thousand calls are made to NHS Direct monthly, approximately 500 of which are from non-English-speaking service users. Calls to NHS Direct that require interpreters are expected to increase.
“We are delighted to work with NHS Direct,” said Brian Kelly, Senior Vice President of Europe for BGS. “This service highlights our ability to provide a comprehensive interpretation and translation service for organizations communicating in many languages. It also further strengthens our position as a leading provider of interpretation services to government agencies and healthcare providers.”
BGS will use its Web-based language services portal, Elcano(TM), http://nhs.bowneglobal.co.uk/, to receive, assign and track all interpretation and translation requests from NHS Direct. BGS will be equipped to respond to hundreds of interpretation and translation requests each day.
BGS and NHS 2-2-2
BGS, which has six locations throughout England, already provides face-to- face interpretation, British Sign Language interpretation and translation services to hospitals throughout the United Kingdom. The company provides similar services to the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform in Ireland; the Department of Justice in the United States; and the University of Maryland Medical System.
About the National Health Service
NHS Direct, the confidential 24-hour health advice and information service, handles over half a million telephone calls and half a million Web site visits each month. Over the past six years, it has grown from a small- scale pilot project to become one of the largest and most successful healthcare providers of its kind in the world.
About Bowne Global Solutions
Bowne Global Solutions (BGS), which employs 2,000 employees in 24 countries, provides interpreters for hundreds of in-person and over-the-phone assignments every day, in the widest range of available languages-over 250 in all-including rare languages and dialects. Our in-country translators and network of 10,000 qualified linguistic resources can translate information and documents into more than 60 languages. For more information, visit http://www.bowneglobal.com/.
Bowne Global Solutions is a business unit of Bowne & Co., Inc. , a global leader in providing high-value solutions that empower our clients’ communications. In addition to BGS, Bowne & Co.'s diversified business units include Bowne Financial Print, the world’s largest financial printer; Bowne Enterprise Solutions, a leading provider of digital printing and electronic delivery of personalized communications; and Bowne Business Solutions, the leader in delivering a full array of business process outsourcing services to the legal and financial services industries. For more information, visit http://www.bowne.com/.
Bowne Global Solutions
CONTACT: Pam McKinlay, Director of Marketing Communications of BowneGlobal Solutions, +1-917-339-4878, pam.mckinlay@bowneglobal.com
Web site: http://www.bowneglobal.com/
