OVERVIEW The provision of comprehensive but understandable educational resources is a cornerstone in informed consent. It has been shown that patients often fail to comprehend medical information, the risks and benefits, and/or fail to retain information provided in face-to-face provision of education. As such it is paramount that educational materials are clear, effective and accessible, or readable, to the general consumer. With most patients looking towards online resources for educational material, clinicians require a reliable and trusted source to which they may direct patients. InsideRadiology...

All original articles from InsideRadiology, categorized as provision of information for “health consumers”, were extracted, pre-processed for only salient information, and their readability assessed. Quantitative readability was determined by metrics of: Flesch-Kincaid Grade level (FKGL), Flesch Reading Ease scale (FRES), Simple Measure of Gobbledygook (SMOG), Gunning-Fog index and the New Dale-Chall (NDC) formula. Each of these metrics assessing the complexity of contained words and total length of an article/sentence/paragraph via various formulae and their correlates to a US school grade. The readability assessments were undertaken...

A total of 96 articles were examined over 11 different categories as per the InsideRadiology website. These categories include interventional radiology, nuclear medicine, neuroradiology, abdominal imaging, men’s health, women’s health, breast imaging, paediatric imaging, general radiology and MRI information. The ‘most’ and ‘least’ readable articles are summarised in Table 1. The average FRES score of all health consumer information contained within InsideRadiology is 52.4 (range 28.9 – 66.7) corresponding to a US school grade of 10th-12th grade, representing ‘highly readable content’. The most readable articles...

Overall, the majority of health consumer information from InsideRadiology is written to the (US) 10th-12th level, appropriate for a large contingent of Australian citizens. The article “contrast medium” may benefit from revision due to its low readability score, especially in context of the commonality of contrast administration. Similarly, select articles within the general radiology section may benefit from revision, allowing greater accessibility to articles which are heavily referenced in other categories. Readability assessment and redesign is an area ripe for review using AI, and there...

Reference List Cheng, C., & Dunn, M. (2015). Health literacy and the Internet: a study on the readability of Australian online health information. Australia and New Zealand Journal of Public Health, 309-314. Hall, D., Prochazka, A., & Fink, A. (2012). Informed consent for clinical treatment. Canadian Medical Association Journal, 533–540. The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Radiologists. (2021). InsideRadiology. Retrieved from InsideRadiology: https://www.insideradiology.com.au/ World Health Organization. (2013). Health literacy: The solid facts. Retrieved from World Health Organization: https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/128703/e96854.pdf