Medical Text Rewriting for Non-Experts: A Guideline-Driven LLM Approach

Mana Kuramoto, Hiroyuki Nagai, Keiko Yamada, Hiroo Ide, Masayo Hayakawa, Tomohiro Nishiyama, Shoko Wakamiya, Eiji Aramaki


Abstract
Medical research is highly specialized, making it difficult for patients and general readers to understand recent findings.Traditionally, text simplification, replacing technical terms with more accessible expressions, has been employed. However, this approach alone is limited in addressing a lack of background knowledge and often results in the loss of important information.Therefore, this study defines “rewriting for non-experts” as a rewriting process that, in addition to simplification, supplements essential background knowledge such as the significance of the research and reasons it is needed and proposes a method for implementing this process using large language models (LLMs).To verify the effectiveness of the proposed approach, a quantitative evaluation using automatic metrics was conducted. The results showed that the method combining the guidelines for human text creation with few-shot examples of reference texts achieved the highest scores.The expansion of the guidelines is planned as part of future work to enable the rewriting of scientific and technological information in a form that is accessible to a broader audience.
Anthology ID:
2026.cl4health-1.10
Volume:
Proceedings of the Third Workshop on Patient-Oriented Language Processing (CL4Health) @ LREC 2026
Month:
May
Year:
2026
Address:
Palma, Mallorca (Spain)
Editors:
Deepak Gupta, Paul Thompson, Sophia Ananiadou, Dina Demner-Fushman
Venues:
CL4Health | WS
SIG:
Publisher:
ELRA Language Resources Association (ELRA)
Note:
Pages:
107–116
Language:
External URL:
https://lrec.elra.info/lrec2026-ws-cl4health-10
DOI:
10.63317/37xq8q3m7grc
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Mana Kuramoto, Hiroyuki Nagai, Keiko Yamada, Hiroo Ide, Masayo Hayakawa, Tomohiro Nishiyama, Shoko Wakamiya, and Eiji Aramaki. 2026. Medical Text Rewriting for Non-Experts: A Guideline-Driven LLM Approach. In Proceedings of the Third Workshop on Patient-Oriented Language Processing (CL4Health) @ LREC 2026, pages 107–116, Palma, Mallorca (Spain). ELRA Language Resources Association (ELRA).
Cite (Informal):
Medical Text Rewriting for Non-Experts: A Guideline-Driven LLM Approach (Kuramoto et al., CL4Health 2026)
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