Enhancing Access to Orthopedic Education: Exploring the Potential of Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) in...

Area of Science:

• Orthopedic Surgery
• Health Communication
• Artificial Intelligence

Background:

• Poor health literacy is linked to negative health outcomes.
• The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and National Institutes of Health (NIH) recommend patient educational materials (PEMs) be at an eighth-grade reading level.
• Rotator cuff injuries (RCIs) are common orthopedic conditions requiring clear patient education.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate generative artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities in rewriting PEMs about RCIs.
• To determine if AI can adapt RCI-related PEMs to meet the recommended eighth-grade reading level.
• To assess the impact of AI on the readability and length of RCI patient materials.

Main Methods:

• Collected online PEMs for RCIs from top-ranked orthopedic hospitals.
• Utilized generative AI (Chat Generative Pretrained Transformer Plus, version 4.0) to rewrite PEMs.
• Calculated readability scores and word counts for original and rewritten materials.
• Employed paired t-tests to analyze statistical significance.

Main Results:

• Generative AI significantly reduced the reading-grade level of RCI PEMs by an average of 4.33 points (p < 0.001).
• AI also significantly decreased the word count of the materials by an average of 442.68 words (p < 0.001).
• The rewritten materials met the recommended eighth-grade reading level.

Conclusions:

• Generative AI is a viable tool for rewriting patient educational materials on rotator cuff injuries.
• AI-generated content can achieve the recommended reading comprehension levels set by the CDC and NIH.
• Healthcare providers and administrators should consider leveraging AI for creating accessible patient education resources.