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Article published In: Computational Terminology
Edited by Ayla Rigouts Terryn and Patrick Drouin
[Terminology 31:1] 2025
► pp. 37–71

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AI as a resource for the clarification of medical terminology

An analysis of its advantages and limitations

 | Pompeu Fabra University (UPF) | National Distance Education University (UNED)
 | National Distance Education University (UNED)
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Open Access publication of this article was funded through a Transformative Agreement with Pompeu Fabra University.

Published online: 23 May 2025
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https://doi.org/10.1075/term.00083.vid
Abstract
Medical terminology is perceived as an obstacle for patients and family members to understand the medical message. In this context, plain language advocates for making specialised knowledge accessible to citizens. This article puts the synergy between medical terminology, plain language, and computational linguistics (a branch of Artificial Intelligence) on the table. Our purpose is to determine if Generative AI applications, like ChatGPT, can assist in creating glossaries of terms with their corresponding simple variants. For this, a relevant sub-field of medicine, cardiology, was taken as a case study, even though it could be extrapolated to other sub-fields. Next, a glossary of key cardiology terms was created following a classic methodological approach. Then, the most relevant phases of the process (terminology extraction, search for synonyms, and selection of the clearest synonym) were reproduced using ChatGPT. The results of the comparative study between both approaches give a glimpse of the extent to which this technology can be a useful resource for creating glossaries that can be employed for writing using plain language.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theoretical framework
  • 3.Terminology work, plain language, and artificial intelligence
  • 4.Methodology
    • 4.1Creation of a classic glossary (GS)
    • 4.2Reproduction of TW phases using ChatGPT
    • 4.3Comparison between both methodological approaches
  • 5.Results
    • 5.1Results of the GS development
    • 5.2Outcomes of the phases reproduced by ChatGPT and comparative analysis
  • 6.Conclusions and future work
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • References
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