NSW Multicultural Health Communication Service: main platform

The NSW Multicultural Health Communication Service (MHCS) publishes authoritative, translated health information for clinicians and patients across the NSW population, in 60+ languages. PretaGov has been MHCS's CMS partner across multiple platform generations, with the most recent upgrade in 2024.

Background

MHCS sits inside NSW Health and exists because Australia's health-information audience isn't monolingual. A diabetes pamphlet, a vaccination information sheet, an aged-care guideline — each needs to exist in Arabic, Cantonese, Vietnamese, Korean, Tamil and dozens of other languages, with the same authority and currency as the English source.

That creates a content-management problem most CMS platforms do badly: how do users find the right document in their language without first knowing the canonical English title? How does the platform signal stale translations when the source content updates? How does search surface the authoritative version rather than an out-of-date variant?

Solution

The MHCS platform is built on Plone with a multilingual content model that treats language variants as first-class — translations are linked back to their canonical source, with workflow that signals when re-translation is needed. Search uses Elasticsearch with per-language analysers and a query-time pivot that returns the user's preferred-language version when one exists, falling back to the canonical English when it doesn't.

The current MHCS platform iteration (delivered 2024) included a substantial editor-experience refresh, accessibility upgrades, and migration of legacy translated content. The platform supports the MHCS publishing team's review-and-approval workflow for new content and for translation updates.

Why this matters

Health information that doesn't reach the people who need it isn't a clinical resource — it's a compliance artefact. MHCS exists to close that gap, and the platform is the operational backbone for doing so at scale. The same content patterns and search infrastructure are reused by the MHCS Vaultmatix translators workspace (separate case study) and the MHCS Medical Appointment Translator app (separate case study) — three distinct products supporting one mission.