www.astesj.com 257 Diffusion of Technology for Language Challenges in the South African Healthcare Environment Phathutshedzo Makovhololo, Tiko Iyamu * Department of Information Technology, Faculty of Informatics and Design, Cape Peninsula University of Technology, Cape Town 7700, South Africa A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T Article history: Received: 18 June, 2020 Accepted: 09 July, 2020 Online: 28 July, 2020 Even though mobile technologies are increasingly used to enable communications between providers and receivers of healthcare services, there remain severity challenges owing to the use of various indigenous languages in many Africa countries. Some of the challenges get worst in a countries like South Africa where there are eleven official languages. As a result, interpreters and technology-enabled translation become inevitable. However, technology-enabled translation is even more complex because of the semantics that exists in the languages. The study was undertaken to identify the critical challenging factors that exists in the use of South African languages for healthcare services. The interpretivist approach was employed, and Rogers’ diffusion of innovations (DOI) theory was applied in the analysis of the data, to examine and understand how indigenous languages affects healthcare services. From the analysis, six factors were found: confidentiality, translation, interpretation, synchronisation, spoken language, and integration, and categorised into three groups, namely ethics, services and systems. Keywords: Healthcare Diffusion of Innovation Language translation 1. Introduction The activities and care of the health sector include diagnosis, medications, and treatment of disease and other forms of illness [1]. These activities rely on communication between actors (patients and healthcare practitioners) in the providing and receiving of healthcare services. As a result of significance of communication, information and communication technology (ICT) solutions, such as mobile technologies are explored as enabler. The ICT solutions are increasingly being used to facilitate communication of information across healthcare teams and groups, in the delivering of care and services [2]. Despite the increasing use of technology-enabled communication solutions, there remain many challenges. Some of the challenges arise from the use of various languages and dialect, which has different semantics. This challenge is worst in South Africa where there are eleven official languages. Overcoming language barriers within the healthcare sector is considered one of the critical challenges threatening care services to patients [3]. At the time of this study, there were about 54 million people in South Africa. From which only 4.9 million people were English speakers, and the remainder of the population speak African languages such as IsiZulu, IsiXhosa, Sepedi, Sesotho, Tshivenda, and Xitsonga. Consequently, the healthcare delivery system is hard-pressed to handle this diversity [4]. Qassim gives an example, that when capturing text using two different languages for the same thing, translation is required because different meanings can be created despite similarities in the intentions to say the same thing [5]. Another factor that influence the challenges of communication is cultural affiliation. In addressing some of these challenges, innovations can be employed and diffused. Rogers diffusion of innovation (DOI) has been applied in my studies where innovations or diffusion of technologies were investigated [6]. The DOI theory has been widely applied in studies including those of public health and medical care, in many areas such as diffusion, integration, innovation, and implementation [7]. In DOI, an innovation is referred to as “an idea, practice, or object that is perceived as new by an individual or another unit of adoption” [6: 11]. Diffusion is defined as “the process by which an innovation is communicated through certain channels over time among the members of a social system” [6]. One of the focuses of the DOI theory is to understand why “potential users make decisions to adopt or reject an innovation based on beliefs that they form about the innovation” [8]. Theories are concerned with the manner in which a new technological idea, artefact or technique is migrated from creation to use [9]. Rogers classifies the innovation-decision process into five categories: (1) knowledge; (2) persuasion; (3) decision; (4) implementation; and (5) confirmation [6]. ASTESJ ISSN: 2415-6698 * Corresponding Author:Tiko Iyamu, Email: connectvilla@yahoo.com Advances in Science, Technology and Engineering Systems Journal Vol. 5, No. 4, 257-265 (2020) www.astesj.com https://dx.doi.org/10.25046/aj050432