Online services and computerized language translation systems are overcoming the Tower of Babel When Daniel Carlin, MD, e-mailed instructions to a Russian sailor that allowed the sailor to do emergency surgery at sea on his own infected elbow, it captured national news.

One of the key elements that made this story possible was the online service the Boston emergency physician used to translate his words before he transmitted them. The sailor, Victor Yazikov, was on the first leg of the "Around Alone" race, about 400 miles off the coast of South Africa. Each sailor in the race has to have a laptop, linked via satellite, with an Internet connection.  So the sailor made use of Online language translator to communicate with the Daniel Carlin, MD.

 Another story is of a second racer, Isabelle Autissier, requested that Dr. Carlin occasionally consulted with her physician, Dr. Jean-Yves Chouve, a French native. Dr. Carlin, who practices telemedicine fulltime, now consults frequently with Dr. Chouve via e-mail by typing his message in English, cutting and pasting it into a clipboard, moving to language translationtool, pasting the message there and pushing the button that translates it into French, before prescribing for Isabelle Austissier.

Expect medical applications to grow with translation industry. Dr. Carlin, whose ocean practice serves business travelers, super yachts and professional boaters, admittedly is one of a few clinical distance medicine physicians. He runs a 24-hour virtual emergency department and, with a colleague and has started to provide virtual radiology consults to a nurse who transmits digital images from an Internet cafe in Africa. Yet Dr. Carlin foresees global connectivity among patients and physicians, as well as Web sites that will let clinicians work more closely with researchers. Such collaboration, he is quick to point out, has sparked medical breakthroughs throughout history. "The medium is now the Internet," he says.