The Development of a Natural Language Generation System For Personalized e-Health Information

Personalization—adaptivity to the individual—is becoming an essential component of any com- puter-based system. In e-health systems, person- alization of health information is emerging as a key factor in the trend to patient-centric care. Patient-centric healthcare aims to engage patients in their treatment to promote greater compliance and satisfaction with their therapeutic regimens, resulting in both better patient outcomes and re- duced healthcare costs. We have developed a prototype Web-based Natural Language Genera- tion system for the authoring and subsequent per- sonalization of patient education materials. Our initial domain of application is reconstructive breast surgery, but our Natural Language software tools and authoring methodologies are generally applicable to all medical interventions.