The results of our proposed research will extend the usability of MT in healthcare and serve as a foundation for further research into improving the availability of health materials for individuals with Limited English Proficiency. Our description of public health translation work from Aim 1 will provide new understanding of existing barriers to translation. The error analysis from Aim 2 will identify specific focus areas for improving MT.
Aim 3 will provide fundamentally new MT technology designed to adapt generic systems to the health domain, as well as a prototype implementation of a domain-adapted post-processing module. The evaluation studies in Aim 4 will provide a model for evaluation of machine translation technologies and provide benchmarks from which to evaluate advances in the machine translations for health materials in the future. Ultimately, this work will advance us towards the long term goal of eliminating health disparities caused by language barriers and improve access to pertinent multilingual health information for those with limited English proficiency. Review CriteriaSignificanceInvestigator(s)InnovationApproachEnvironmentReviewer 121321Reviewer 212121Reviewer 333453

Public Health Relevance

The ability to access health information in the U.S. depends greatly on the ability to speak English. Yet a growing number of people in this country speak a language other than English. We propose to develop novel domain-specific natural language processing and machine translation technology and evaluate its impact on the process of producing multilingual health materials. Ultimately, this work will advance us towards the long term goal of eliminating health disparities caused by language barriers and improve access to pertinent multilingual health information for individuals with limited English proficiency.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Library of Medicine (NLM)
Type
Research Project (R01)
Project #
5R01LM010811-02
Application #
8138590
Study Section
Biomedical Library and Informatics Review Committee (BLR)
Program Officer
Sim, Hua-Chuan
Project Start
2010-09-30
Project End
2015-09-29
Budget Start
2011-09-30
Budget End
2012-09-29
Support Year
2
Fiscal Year
2011
Total Cost
$356,340
Indirect Cost
Name
University of Washington
Department
Administration
Type
Schools of Public Health
DUNS #
605799469
City
Seattle
State
WA
Country
United States
Zip Code
98195
Turner, Anne M; Brownstein, Megumu K; Cole, Kate et al. (2015) Modeling workflow to design machine translation applications for public health practice. J Biomed Inform 53:136-46
Dew, Kristin; Turner, Anne M; Desai, Loma et al. (2015) PHAST: A Collaborative Machine Translation and Post-Editing Tool for Public Health. AMIA Annu Symp Proc 2015:492-501
Capurro, Daniel; Chaudhuri, Shomir; Turner, Anne M (2015) The Online Availability of Multilingual Health Promotion Materials Produced by Local Health Departments: an Information Assessment. Stud Health Technol Inform 216:380-5
Kirchhoff, Katrin; Capurro, Daniel; Turner, Anne M (2014) A Conjoint Analysis Framework for Evaluating User Preferences in Machine Translation. Mach Transl 28:1-17
Turner, Anne M; Bergman, Margo; Brownstein, Megumu et al. (2014) A comparison of human and machine translation of health promotion materials for public health practice: time, costs, and quality. J Public Health Manag Pract 20:523-9
Mandel, Hannah; Turner, Anne M (2013) Exploring local public health work in the context of novel translation technologies. Stud Health Technol Inform 192:1209
Turner, Anne M; Mandel, Hannah; Capurro, Daniel (2013) Local health department translation processes: potential of machine translation technologies to help meet needs. AMIA Annu Symp Proc 2013:1378-85
Mandel, Hannah; Turner, Anne M (2013) Exploring local public health workflow in the context of automated translation technologies. AMIA Annu Symp Proc 2013:939-45
Turner, Anne M; Kirchhoff, Katrin; Capurro, Daniel (2012) Using crowdsourcing technology for testing multilingual public health promotion materials. J Med Internet Res 14:e79
Kirchhoff, Katrin; Turner, Anne M; Axelrod, Amittai et al. (2011) Application of statistical machine translation to public health information: a feasibility study. J Am Med Inform Assoc 18:473-8