Mercedes-benz Sprinter,the world’s leading medical vehicle,realized the problem for doctors in diagnosis is how pain is never accurately described by patients, but pain characteristics is one of the most important indicator that gives direction for diagnosis.

We want to create a solution for patients to communicate pain better to doctors.

The brand and Thai Health partnered to create a universal language that overcomes language barriers, the symbol system that can help doctors diagnose every known illness, without using verbal language.

Our communication designers developed each symbol with pain specialists from Thai Health Foundation and Siriraj Hospital,as well as the medical volunteers from Princess Mother Medical Volunteer Foundation to understand more on rural patients.In order,to achieve the most effective symbols to communicate pain.

This will help reduce miscommunication between health professionals who work in rural areas,both volunteers and those work in public health centers, and their patients, who speak different languages.

The final product is not limited to just a pamphlet, we designed a set of symbols that help patients describe their pain characteristics to the doctors accurately, the symbols can be understood universally because we use instinctive design, which is the design from fundamental objects, shapes, and forms; the symbols are based on experience that can be perceived and give the same understanding for all.

For example, the shape of a thorn, no matter what this pointy shape is called in any languages around the world, everyone have the same understanding that this shape is sharp and know the feeling of pain it causes. Or the shape of fire, everyone automatically understands the feeling fire gives- -the burning sensation.

The way it works is doctors presenting these symbols to the patients, and patients can simply point the location on their body where the pain occurs, and point at the type of pain they are experiencing, when pain type is specified it helps leads medical personnel to the right diagnosis in different illnesses.

This set of symbols overcomes language barriers that used to be a long-standing problem in medical care, it can be implemented in various ways in other locations, because miscommunications and inability to describe pain characteristics happen everywhere where doctors and patients do not share the same language.

It has an impact on people’s lives, those whose language is the minority in the country now gets the same standard of healthcare as others.

The universal language of pain help reduce miscommunications that could cause medical errors and waste medical resources, as well as strengthen the brand’s proposition as the world’s leading medical vehicle.

There are 7,000 languages in the world, and there are 73 languages used in Thailand alone, including Khmer and tribal languages such as Phuan, different languages lead to misunderstanding which makes doctors encounter difficulties in diagnosing patients in remote areas, and interpreters aren’t always available, with some being just tribal languages which is not translatable, miscommunication is still one of the most significant causes of medical errors.

Mercedes-Benz Sprinter wants to design a medical product that can help reduce the rate of misdiagnosis and unnecessarily wasting medical resources and to increase healthcare quality, in the simplest but most universal way possible which results in the tool that’s being used by health professionals who work in rural areas of Thailand, the design result that overcomes language barriers.