title: Authoring and generation of individualized patient education materials.
abstract: Although the pre-surgical patient-surgeon encounter is the opportunity to educate the patient, it is essential that the patient be given educational materials to complement the face-to-face exchange. This is virtu-ally impossible to do well with brochures, because many combinations of procedures are possible, dif-ferent patients have different concerns, and patients have varying levels of literacy and knowledge. In the extreme, a patient would either be given a set of bro-chures selected from 100s of variants, or all patients would be given the same set of brochures without regard for differing needs. We have been developing an information brochure generator that customizes material for every individual patient regardless of the complexity of the surgical intervention.
authors.affiliation: Waterloo Institute for Health Informatics Research, Waterloo, the Division of Plastic Surgery, University Health Network, University of Toronto, Toronto, Onatrio, Canada and the Information Sciences Institute, University of Southern California, U.S.A.
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Dimarco
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Bray
authors.forename: H D
authors.initials: HD
authors.lastname: Covvey
authors.forename: D D
authors.initials: DD
authors.lastname: Cowan
authors.forename: V
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Diciccio
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Hovy
authors.forename: Joan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Lipa
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Yang
mesh_terms: D001940:Breast / Q000601:surgery; D006801:Humans; D009323:Natural Language Processing; D010174:Pamphlets; D010353:Patient Education as Topic / Q000379:methods*; D011300:Preoperative Care; D019651:Plastic Surgery Procedures; D013664:Teaching Materials; D014956:Writing