Transcending Language Barriers: Can ChatGPT Be the Key to Enhancing Multilingual Accessibility in Health Care?

Objective: To explore the capabilities of Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer (ChatGPT) for the purpose of simplifying and translating radiology reports into Spanish, Hindi, and Russian languages, with comparisons to its performance in simplifying to the English language.

Methods: Fifty deidentified abdomen-pelvis CT reports were fed to ChatGPT (4.0), instructing it to simplify and translate the report. The processed reports were rated on factual correctness (category 1), potential harmful errors (category 2), completeness (category 3), and explanation of medical terms (category 4). The translated versions were also rated on the quality of translation (category 5). The scores in each category were compared between the translated versions and each translated version was compared with the English version in the first four categories. The original reports and the simplified English reports were rated on the Flesch Reading Ease Score and the Flesch Kincaid Grade Level.

Results: The Spanish translation outperformed the Hindi and Russian version significantly in categories 1 and 3 (P < .05). All translated versions performed significantly worse compared with the English version in category 4 (P < .001). Notably, the Hindi translated version performed significantly worse in all four categories (P < .05). The Russian translated version was also significantly worse in category 3 (P < .05). In the first three categories, the Spanish translation, and in the first two categories, the Russian translation demonstrated no statistically significant difference from the English version. No statistically significant difference was observed in the Flesch Reading Ease Score and Flesch Kincaid Grade Level of the simplified English reports. Typographical errors in the original reports negatively affected the translation.

Conclusion: ChatGPT demonstrates potential ability in translating reports and communicating pertinent clinical information with limited errors. More training and tailoring are required for languages that are not as commonly used in medical literature. Large language models can be used for translating and simplifying radiology reports, potentially improving access to health care and helping reduce health care costs.