Society of Medical Simplifiers

Chen Lyu, Gabriele Pergola


Abstract
Medical text simplification is crucial for making complex biomedical literature more accessible to non-experts. Traditional methods struggle with the specialized terms and jargon of medical texts, lacking the flexibility to adapt the simplification process dynamically. In contrast, recent advancements in large language models (LLMs) present unique opportunities by offering enhanced control over text simplification through iterative refinement and collaboration between specialized agents. In this work, we introduce the Society of Medical Simplifiers, a novel LLM-based framework inspired by the “Society of Mind” (SOM) philosophy. Our approach leverages the strengths of LLMs by assigning five distinct roles, i.e., Layperson, Simplifier, Medical Expert, Language Clarifier, and Redundancy Checker, organized into interaction loops. This structure allows the agents to progressively improve text simplification while maintaining the complexity and accuracy of the original content. Evaluations on the Cochrane text simplification dataset demonstrate that our framework is on par with or outperforms state-of-the-art methods, achieving superior readability and content preservation through controlled simplification processes.
Anthology ID:
2024.tsar-1.7
Volume:
Proceedings of the Third Workshop on Text Simplification, Accessibility and Readability (TSAR 2024)
Month:
November
Year:
2024
Address:
Miami, Florida, USA
Editors:
Matthew Shardlow, Horacio Saggion, Fernando Alva-Manchego, Marcos Zampieri, Kai North, Sanja Štajner, Regina Stodden
Venue:
TSAR
SIG:
Publisher:
Association for Computational Linguistics
Note:
Pages:
61–68
Language:
URL:
https://aclanthology.org/2024.tsar-1.7
DOI:
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Chen Lyu and Gabriele Pergola. 2024. Society of Medical Simplifiers. In Proceedings of the Third Workshop on Text Simplification, Accessibility and Readability (TSAR 2024), pages 61–68, Miami, Florida, USA. Association for Computational Linguistics.
Cite (Informal):
Society of Medical Simplifiers (Lyu & Pergola, TSAR 2024)
Copy Citation:
PDF:
https://aclanthology.org/2024.tsar-1.7.pdf