Making texts in electronic health records comprehensible to consumers: a prototype translator

Narrative reports from electronic health records are a major source of content for personal health records. We designed and implemented a prototype text translator to make these reports more comprehensible to consumers. The translator identifies difficult terms, replaces them with easier synonyms, and generates and inserts explanatory texts for them. In feasibility testing, the application was used to translate 9 clinical reports. Majority (68.8%) of text replacements and insertions were deemed correct and helpful by expert review. User evaluation demonstrated a non-statistically significant trend toward better comprehension when translation is provided (p=0.15).