Using artificial intelligence to expedite and enhance plain language summary abstract writing of scientific content.

Objective: To assess the capacity of a bespoke artificial intelligence (AI) process to help medical writers efficiently generate quality plain language summary abstracts (PLSAs).

Materials and methods: Three independent studies were conducted. In Studies 1 and 3, original scientific abstracts (OSAs; n = 48, n = 2) and corresponding PLSAs written by medical writers versus bespoke AI were assessed using standard readability metrics. Study 2 compared time and effort of medical writers (n = 10) drafting PLSAs starting with an OSA (n = 6) versus the output of 1 bespoke AI (n = 6) and 1 non-bespoke AI (n = 6) process. These PLSAs (n = 72) were assessed by subject matter experts (SMEs; n = 3) for accuracy and physicians (n = 7) for patient suitability. Lastly, in Study 3, medical writers (n = 22) and patients/patient advocates (n = 5) compared quality of medical writer and bespoke AI-generated PLSAs.

Results: In Study 1, bespoke AI PLSAs were easier to read than medical writer PLSAs across all readability metrics (P <.01). In Study 2, bespoke AI output saved medical writers >40% in time for PLSA creation and required less effort than unassisted writing. SME-assessed quality was higher for AI-assisted PLSAs, and physicians preferred bespoke AI-generated outputs for patient use. In Study 3, bespoke AI PLSAs were more readable and rated of higher quality than medical writer PLSAs.

Discussion: The bespoke AI process may enhance access to health information by helping medical writers produce PLSAs of scientific content that are fit for purpose.

Conclusion: The bespoke AI process can more efficiently create better quality, more readable first draft PLSAs versus medical writer-generated PLSAs.