Polyglot Systems Company Profile

Polyglot Systems was founded in 2001 by Dr. Charles Lee, a board certified internal medicine physician and a first generation Korean immigrant, who came to the United States at the age of seven. Upon arrival to America, Dr. Lee spoke no English and has since spent a lifetime experiencing and witnessing the challenges faced by those in our society with limited English proficiency. One such experience took place early in Dr. Lee's medical career while serving as a medical resident on call one evening at Aultman Hospital in Canton, Ohio. Dr. Lee was paged to the emergency department to help interpret for a family waiting in the department. Dr Lee was nervous because he spoke only a little Korean but was willing to help the best he could. When he arrived however, he discovered that the family spoke Vietnamese – not Korean. The person who had called Dr. Lee assumed that since he was Asian and the family was Asian, that they all spoke "Asian". This was Dr. Lee's first experience as a health care provider being unable to help a patient because of a language barrier. And the most difficult part of this whole experience for Dr. Lee was that he couldn't even tell the family that he couldn't help them; he could only walk away. Dr. Lee called upon this and other similar experiences to build his vision that ultimately led to the foundation of Polyglot Systems. He and the rest of the Polyglot team are driven to build solutions that enable effective communication between all patients and their health care providers so that these situations never happen again. Our aim is to enable medical encounters that treat all patients effectively and with dignity, while empowering the medical practitioner to do what they love – provide care to those in need.