Vital launches AI translator to simplify medical jargon for patients

Digital health company Vital on Tuesday has launched an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered doctor-to-patient translator to convert highly technical medical terminology into plain everyday language for patients to understand. Unveiled at the Ai4 conference, the tool uses large language models (LLMs) and natural language processing (NLP) to generate 5th-grade reading-level explanations of lab and imaging results, doctor's notes, discharge summaries and patient instructions.

According to CEO Aaron Patzer, "for people who aren't medically trained, misunderstanding medical jargon can result in unnecessary stress and poor health outcomes." He said the company has built the translator "to inform and empower patients for their health and to enhance the medical decision-making process between patients and their care providers."

Improving health literacy

Vital said the HIPPA-compliant translator not only helps patients, but also benefits providers along with hospitals and health systems. For providers, the tool increases access by boosting the level of health literacy for patients as well as other care team members. In turn, Vital believes this will help cut back on workload, limit the risk of miscommunication and reduce the time spent explaining diagnoses and treatments. Meanwhile, hospitals and health systems can use the translator to minimise the likelihood of adverse clinical events by including the patient in their own care plan and focusing their attention on high-impact interventions, such as medication compliance and follow-up adherence.

The company said a panel of internal and external physicians studied almost 2000 doctor-to-patient translator outputs from real-world medical notes, finding that 99.4% of the translations would not lead to patient harm. The remaining 0.6% were marked as "unsafe," meaning they contained inaccuracies or were missing key information from the summary that could potentially cause patient harm. Vital called the overall outcome "reassuring and substantially safer than the average rate of doctor-patient miscommunication," which it said were identified in almost half of medical malpractice claims in a recent study published in the Journal of Patient Satisfaction.

Vital, which raised nearly $25 million in Series B funding earlier this year, said the tool is free to the public and is available on any browser. The translator is also available to hospitals and health systems across the US that use the company's ERAdvisor and CareAdvisor applications. 

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