Medical translation call center expanding to New Mexico
The Arizona Republic
Jan. 9, 2006
Teya Vitu

TUCSON - Explosive growth year after year is causing Tucson-based CyraCom to expand to Las Cruces, N.M., to field calls from hospitals requiring live foreign language translations.

Calls from more than 800 hospitals and health care centers are routed through CyraCom's interpreter center in Nogales, which has about 70 employees.

The Las Cruces center is planned to open in spring and will eventually have about 100 employees, said Michael Greenbaum, CyraCom's chief executive.


CyraCom provides live translations of more than 150 languages in Nogales and
with remote interpreters working from home. Las Cruces will play the same
role.

"Your call coming in could end up with a remote interpreter at home or at
the centers in Nogales or Las Cruces," Greenbaum said.

When CyraCom was started eight years ago, translation was done in Tucson.
The center was moved to Nogales in 2003. The Tucson headquarters, at 5780 N.
Swan Road, employs about 100 people.

CyraCom, a private company, has seen a 40 percent increase in revenue in
each of the past three years, but Greenbaum declined to reveal earnings.

CyraCom chose Las Cruces for expansion because it's relatively close to
Tucson and has a well-educated, bilingual population through New Mexico
State University.

The top languages requested from the health care industry nationwide are
Spanish, Chinese (Cantonese and Mandarin), Russian, Arabic, Vietnamese and
Korean.

"In Arizona, Somali was in the top five last year," Greenbaum said.

CyraCom provides telephone translation services between doctors and
patients. All Tucson hospitals use CyraCom, Greenbaum said.