Background/Purpose:

The internet is used nowadays as the preferred repository where people search for, access and publish information on any topic. However, language barriers prevent efficient international information exchange. This problem is further exacerbated by the fact that information for restricted and highly focused communities, e.g. communities with an interest in rare diseases, is not easily available or easy to find. An example of such a focused community is the community of individuals and stakeholders interested in lupus or antiphospholipid syndrome (Hughes Syndrome).

Language barriers impede the dissemination of interesting information and the exchange of valuable experiences between people from diverse cultures and backgrounds. Thus communication channels between the various stakeholders, e.g. between researchers and general practitioners (GPs), between specialists and GPs, and between GPs and patients, are cumbersome or even non-existent across countries due to language barriers of national languages and specific terminology.

Methods:

MORMED (Multilingual Organic Information Management in the Medical Domain, www.mormed.eu) is a European Union-funded project that proposes a multilingual community platform combining Web 2.0 social software applications with semantic interpretation of domain-relevant content, enhanced with automatic translation capabilities and fine-tuned for a specific medical domain. It has been under development since March 2010 and piloted upon the community interested in lupus and Antiphospholipid Syndrome (Hughes Syndrome), involving researchers, medical doctors, general practitioners, patients and patient support groups, since spring 2012.

Organisations involved in this project include: King’s College London (UK); Language Technology Centre Ltd. (UK); South East European Research Centre (Greece); Medical and Health Science Centre, University of Debrecen (Hungary); Institute for Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine, University Hospital Mainz (Germany); Hospital Clinic Barcelona (Spain).

Results:

The project promotes online collaboration, where people contribute content and evaluate and exchange information resources, and it supports the diffusion of knowledge within multilingual social networks and online communities. Efficient machine translation, supported by interactive computer-aided human post-editing ensures that all content is seamlessly offered in English, Spanish, German and Hungarian, and at a high quality. Thus, new and innovative translation methods, tools and processes emerge, which set the service offerings of the MORMED service provider apart from those of other providers. A trial version of the platform is available at http://lupus.mormed.eu. The final version of the platform will be released by autumn 2012. 

Conclusion:

The MORMED platform is a multilingual web-based platform focused on the lupus and antiphospholipid syndrome community. High quality translation tools and resources in four languages (English, Spanish, German and Hungarian), along with social-network applications, are proposed as a new tool for information and experience exchange for clinicians, researches and patients involved in this field.

ACR Meeting Abstracts - https://acrabstracts.org/abstract/mormed-project-a-new-21st-century-web-platform-for-multilingual-communication-in-systemic-lupus-erythematosus-and-antiphospholipid-syndrome/