The old saying work to the kiss principle, which stands for Keep It Simple Stupid, has a lot going for it, and now finally the medical profession may be dragged kicking and screaming to the line.
Comment: Translate the medical 'bibles' into plain English
* 11 August 2009 by Stephen Strauss
* Magazine issue 2720. Subscribe and get 4 free issues.
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OVER the past 20 years, healthcare has experienced a Protestant Reformation. In the dim, dark past, a visit to the doctor's office was distinctly High Church. A patient entered as a supplicant, confessing symptoms to the priestly physician, who would consult sacred texts, written in a language nobody who hadn't spent 12 years studying could understand. The physician would return with a diagnosis and treatment whose language the patient was also unlikely to comprehend.
The best online medical information is still written as if only priestly physicians will consult it
Then the internet came along. Suddenly ordinary people could consult the holy texts themselves. In 2008, the Pew Internet and American Life Project found that three-quarters of internet users search for health information online (New Scientist, 25 July, p 20).
Unfortunately the best information - peer-reviewed articles - is still written as if only the priesthood will consult it. Studies have found that medical articles often have a readability score equal to that of the densest of legal documents. One result is that the information people get from the internet is often at variance with journal articles.
I propose a simple solution. Let's translate the medical texts into graphical plain-speak, which journals would require their authors to use if they want to be published. Medical terms may always have a Latinate quality but why can't each paper also come with a standardised graphic which could be posted online to say to patients: this is what our findings mean to you. Not to scientists, or doctors. You.
A good start would be to adopt the diagram invented by environmental scientists Eric Rifkin and Edward Bouwer. It shows the difference between absolute and relative risk in terms of the seating plan of a 1000-seat theatre. Want to know how many more people will experience heart problems after taking Vioxx for nine months? Look down and see 16 filled seats. It sounds almost beyond simple, but it is actually hugely effective.
Rifkin and Bouwer are working to get journals on board. Theirs may not be the only graphical possibility, nor the best in all instances. But it lets the world's Protestant sick feel as if medical research finally is being expressed in a language they can relate to.
Stephen Strauss is a Canadian science writer and columnist
Cheers
