Minimized Text Complexity AI:
A Revolutionary Tool for Health Communications
Minimized Text Complexity AI (MTCAI) is an innovative, AI-driven tool that could help millions of people access and understand health information.
COVID-19 Accessible Communications Case Study
Minimized Text Complexity (MTC) was a collaboration between CIDI, UNC Chapel Hill, and CDC to create appropriate health information for the COVID-19 pandemic for people with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (IDD). The end product was grammatical and syntactical rules that would assure that information was not only at a third grade level but appropriate for people with IDD, and was folded into CDC's Clear Communications Index.
Doing this process by hand was time-intensive, and not feasible to implement on a large scale. Utilizing AI, CIDI researchers and coders created a tool that could automate this process, called MTCAI.
Co-Designed with the Population it Serves
Thanks to a College of Design seed grant, CIDI researchers were able to develop and design this AI-enabled tool and test it with five adults with IDD. The adults were given their "normal" physician's report, and then a summary of the report generated by MTCAI.
The results were overwhelmingly positive. 100% of the participants reported that they:
- Could read the summary.
- Would read this if it was given to them by their doctor.
- Would not need help reading the summary.
- Saw a reduction in unfamiliar or difficult words.
- Made correct statements regarding the doctor's general instructions to them.
- Made correct statements regarding the doctor's specific instructions to them.
- Made correct statements regarding their medications.
- Would rather read the MTC summary than the physician’s report.
Universal Applicability
Many populations could benefit from this effective tool creating clearer health information. Some of those populations include:
- Children and young adults
- People who speak English as a second language
- A portion of the population that does not have IDD but does read at about a 3rd grade level
- People in emergency/stressful situations
- Doctors who want to communicate at the appropriate level
Populations
Environments
