When is a smart phone, a really smart phone? We hear a lot about VOIP
solutions, especially the Cisco’s IP Phone phone, or the Motorola Razr and a host of multi-media phones. But have
you heard of a smart phone service called CyraCom? It came into being around
1995, but only started making waves last year, with a voice-activated feature.

It’s not a phone  ordinary
people would buy, but it is pretty smart, as communications devices go. Some
600 hospitals and healthcare networks use it. CyraCom, you see, is actually a translation service that has a handset as an interface. It’s a special instrument with two handsets. It gives two users an ability to talk to each other, even though they do not
understand each other. This service -they call it ‘transparent language services‘ — is a critical tool in emergency situations, when
patient and medical staff don’t speak each other’s language. It gives hospitals a choice of about
150 language interpreters. Languages that CryaCom handles are from
Farsi and Flemish, to Urdu and Zulu!

CyraCom, based in Tucson, Arizona. See case here.