Application of Artificial Intelligence to Patient-Targeted Health Information on Kidney Stone Disease.

OBJECTIVE: The American Medical Association recommends health information to be written at a 6th grade level reading level. Our aim was to determine whether Artificial Intelligence can outperform the existing health information on kidney stone prevention and treatment. METHODS: The top 50 search results for "Kidney Stone Prevention" and "Kidney Stone Treatment" on Google, Bing, and Yahoo were selected. Duplicate webpages, advertisements, pages intended for health professionals such as science articles, links to videos, paid subscription pages, and links nonrelated to kidney stone prevention and/or treatment were excluded. Included pages were categorized into academic, hospital-affiliated, commercial, nonprofit foundations, and other. Quality and readability of webpages were evaluated using validated tools, and the reading level was descriptively compared with ChatGPT generated health information on kidney stone prevention and treatment. RESULTS: 50 webpages on kidney stone prevention and 49 on stone treatment were included in this study. The reading level was determined to equate to that of a 10th to 12th grade student. Quality was measured as "fair" with no pages scoring "excellent" and only 20% receiving a "good" quality. There was no significant difference between pages from academic, hospital-affiliated, commercial, and nonprofit foundation publications. The text generated by ChatGPT was considerably easier to understand with readability levels measured as low as 5th grade. CONCLUSIONS: The language used in existing information on kidney stone disease is of subpar quality and too complex to understand. Machine learning tools could aid in generating information that is comprehensible by the public.

Should I freeze my sperm?-readability and quality of health resources for sperm banking.

Background: Sperm banking refers to the collection and storage of sperm cells for future use. Despite the recommendations of major medical societies, sperm banking is not discussed sufficiently with patients at risk of future fertility. Majority of Americans utilize the internet regarding health information. The aim of this study is to assess the reading level and the quality of online health information on sperm banking. Methods: The top 50 search results from Google, Bing, and Yahoo were selected after searching for the term "sperm banking". Duplicate pages, advertisements, news and magazines, blog posts, videos, paid subscriptions, articles intended for health professionals, and non-related pages were excluded. Four validated readability and two quality assessment tools were used to score the text. Websites were divided into five categories: academic, hospital-affiliated, commercial, non-profit health advocacy, and non-categorized. Descriptive statistics, one sample t-test, and Pearson's correlation coefficient were used to analyze the data. Results: Forty-one webpages were included. The mean Flesch Reading Ease Score (FRES) for all pages was 46.9/100 and the mean reading level was 11th grade, compared to the recommended 6th grade level, across various assessment tools. Utilizing the DISCERN Instrument, quality of online health information was fair. Seven percent of pages received a "good" quality score and no pages received a score of "excellent". On average, 1.5 out of 4 criteria categorized by the JAMA Benchmark, a validated quality assessment tool, were met. The hospital-affiliated webpages received the best reading scores and commercial pages received the highest quality scores. Conclusions: Online health information on sperm banking available in English is of poor quality based on several quality assessment tools and at a reading level significantly higher than what is recommended. Further efforts are needed by providers and healthcare institutions to improve the quality of information available to patients.