Fujitsu's translation hearable will look to aid healthcare in Japan

Fujitsu has announced a translation hearable that works hands-free - a device that will look to aid healthcare professionals in its home country of Japan.

The company, which claims its device is the world's first hands-free speech translator, recently developed technology that's able to recognise people's voices and the location of speakers in order to translate without being prompted.

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And with it citing the increasing number of non-Japanese patients checking into the country's hospitals, the device will now look to bridge the gap created by language differences. The hands-free capabilities, the Japanese company says, will be used for tasks such as diagnosis and treatment.

Also, last year, Fujitsu worked with the University of Tokyo Hospital and the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) to conduct a field trial of multilingual speech translation in the medical field using tablets.

Based on the results, Fujitsu concluded that, as there are many situations in which healthcare professionals have both hands full, there was a need for a wearable speech translation device.

Interestingly, the next stage in this process will be fresh healthcare trials in order to evaluate the effectiveness of the newly developed translation devices - all ahead of their deployment in November 2017.

Naturally, this isn't the only hearable which is able to provide translation when you're in a different country. The likes of Pilot and Mymanu offer a similar functionality, but only through prompts. Fujitsu, though, is offering something different to a more practical area.

Whether it works accurately and consistently in the likes of hospitals remains to be seen, but don't expect it to be the only company exploring this hearable avenue.