Polish is the most popular minority language used by visitors to the South West Acute Hospital (SWAH), according to records from touch-screen technology in the main atrium.

Hospital users have been accessing information screens (based beside the lifts) in nine minority languages: Ulster Scots, Polish, Cantonese, Slovak, Irish, Lithuanian, Hungarian, Mandarin and Latvian.

Outpatients have also been using the self-service check-in system (Savience), situated in the SWAH outpatient department, since the hospital’s opening in June 2012. It has five language options: English, Irish, Polish, Russian and Italian.

There have been 169,856 successful logins at the self-service kiosks since going ‘live’ in June 2012, the majority of which were in English.

Over 1,000 people checked in using a minority language, broken down as follows: 723 in Polish, 215 in Russian, 53 in Irish and 14 in Italian.

A spokeswoman from the Western Trust tells The Impartial Reporter: “The self-service check-in was introduced at the South West Acute Hospital’s outpatient department from its opening in June 2012 to help reduce the time patients have to wait to book in for their appointment. It is located in the Hospital’s main atrium and has proven to be a great success.

“The easy-to-use kiosks allow patients to book in for their outpatient appointment without having to queue to see a receptionist. Patients simply confirm their gender and date of birth when prompted. The system will then ask them to confirm a few further details prior to booking in.

“The kiosks are also equipped with built-in printers, which will print off a ticket which contains the patient’s call number, appointment time and location. Patients are then able to take their seats in the designated waiting area as identified on the ticket.” She concluded: “The check-in kiosk screens can also accommodate patients who do not speak English as their first language, improving accessibility for foreign nationals.”