ChatGPT can eliminate jargon in medical forms: Brown, Mass General Brigham researchers

Medical forms are often complicated and filled with jargon, making them difficult for patients to understand. Especially since they're put in front of people at already stressful moments.

Can ChatGPT help translate? Apparently, yes.

Researchers from Providence, R.I.-based Lifespan and Somerville, Mass.-based Mass General Brigham fed 15 surgical consent forms from teaching hospitals across the country into the artificial intelligence chatbot and asked it to convert them to the average American's reading level. The ChatGPT-generated forms had fewer characters and words, lowered reading time from 3.26 minutes to 2.42, and relied less on the passive voice, according to the preprint study.

"Our hope is that this makes it so that consent forms read less like terms-and-conditions statements and more like how they should read for someone who is entrusting their lives in doctors' hands," lead researcher Rohaid Ali, MD, a neurosurgery resident at Rhode Island Hospital, the teaching hospital for Brown University, said in an Aug. 23 Boston Globe story

Dr. Ali told the newspaper he is already working with other hospitals and health systems to simplify the language in their medical forms via GPT-4, the latest update to ChatGPT, and hopes it can be applied to other healthcare content. He and his fellow researchers found the chatbot lowered the forms' reading level from that of a college freshman to an eighth-grader, the American average.

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