Alfano Marco, Lenzitti Biagio, Lo Bosco Giosuè, Muriana Cinzia, Piazza Tommaso, Vizzini Giovanni
Lero, Dublin City University, Dublin, Ireland; Anghelos Centro Studi Sulla Comunicazione, Palermo, Italy.
Dipartimento di Matematica e Informatica, Università di Palermo, Palermo, Italy.
Int J Med Inform. 2020 Jun;138:104109. doi: 10.1016/j.ijmedinf.2020.104109. Epub 2020 Mar 4.
The paper presents a web-based application, SIMPLE, that facilitates medical text comprehension by identifying the health-related terms of a medical text and providing the corresponding consumer terms and explanations.
The comprehension of a medical text is often a difficult task for laypeople because it requires semantic abilities that can differ from a person to another, depending on his/her health-literacy level. Some systems have been developed for facilitating the comprehension of medical texts through text simplification, either syntactical or lexical. The ones dealing with lexical simplification usually replace the original text and do not provide additional information. We have developed a system that provides the consumer terms alongside the original medical terms and also adds consumer explanations. Moreover, differently from other solutions, our system works with multiple languages.
We have developed the SIMPLE application that is able to automatically: 1) identify medical terms in a medical text by using medical vocabularies; 2) translate the medical terms into consumer terms through medical-consumer thesauri; 3) provide term explanations by using health-consumer dictionaries. SIMPLE can be used as a standalone web application or can it be embedded into common health platforms for real time identification and explanation of medical terms. At present, it works with English and Italian texts but it can be easily extended to other languages. We have run subjective tests with both medical experts and non-experts as well as objective tests to verify the effectiveness of SIMPLE and its simplicity of use.
Non-experts found SIMPLE easy to use and responsive. The big majority of respondents confirmed they were helped by SIMPLE in understanding medical texts and declared their willingness to continue using SIMPLE and to recommend it to other people. The subjective tests, conducted with medical experts on a set of Italian radiology reports, showed an agreement between SIMPLE and the experts, on the highlighted medical terms, that ranges between 74.05 % and 81.16 % as well as an agreement of around 60 % on the consumer term translation. The objective tests showed that the consumer terms, provided by SIMPLE, are, on average, eighteen times more familiar than the relative medical terms so proving, once more, the effectiveness of SIMPLE in simplifying the medical terms.
The performed tests demonstrate the effectiveness of SIMPLE, its simplicity of use and the willingness of people in continuing with its use. SIMPLE provides, with a good agreement level, the same information that medical experts would provide. Finally, the consumer terms are 'objectively' more familiar than the related technical terms and as a consequence, much easier to understand.
本文介绍了一个基于网络的应用程序SIMPLE，它通过识别医学文本中与健康相关的术语并提供相应的通俗术语及解释，来促进医学文本的理解。
对于外行人来说，理解医学文本往往是一项艰巨的任务，因为这需要语义能力，而这种能力会因个人健康素养水平的不同而有所差异。已经开发了一些系统，通过句法或词汇层面的文本简化来促进医学文本的理解。那些处理词汇简化的系统通常会替换原文，且不提供额外信息。我们开发了一个系统，它在提供原文医学术语的同时还提供通俗术语，并添加了通俗解释。此外，与其他解决方案不同的是，我们的系统支持多种语言。
我们开发了SIMPLE应用程序，它能够自动：1）通过使用医学词汇表在医学文本中识别医学术语；2）通过医学-通俗术语词典将医学术语翻译成通俗术语；3）使用健康-通俗词典提供术语解释。SIMPLE既可以作为一个独立的网络应用程序使用，也可以嵌入到常见的健康平台中，用于实时识别和解释医学术语。目前，它适用于英语和意大利语文本，但可以很容易地扩展到其他语言。我们对医学专家和非专家都进行了主观测试以及客观测试，以验证SIMPLE的有效性及其易用性。
非专家认为SIMPLE易于使用且响应迅速。绝大多数受访者确认SIMPLE帮助他们理解了医学文本，并表示愿意继续使用SIMPLE并推荐给其他人。在一组意大利放射学报告上对医学专家进行的主观测试表明，SIMPLE与专家在突出显示的医学术语上的一致性在74.05%至81.16%之间，在通俗术语翻译上的一致性约为60%。客观测试表明，SIMPLE提供的通俗术语平均比相关医学术语熟悉18倍，这再次证明了SIMPLE在简化医学术语方面的有效性。
所进行的测试证明了SIMPLE的有效性、易用性以及人们继续使用它的意愿。SIMPLE在较高的一致水平上提供了医学专家会提供的相同信息。最后，通俗术语“客观上”比相关技术术语更熟悉，因此更容易理解。
