Assistant Professor Yue Guo has received a $30,000 Arnold O. Beckman Research Award from the U of I Campus Research Board for her project, "Optimizing Personalization in Plain Language Summaries: Comparing Predictive and Interactive Approaches for Tailored Health Information." The award, which recognizes research of exceptional distinction and promise, will support Guo’s ongoing work at AI for health, with a focus on improving the accessibility and personalization of health information.
While general AI-generated summaries are becoming increasingly common in healthcare, Guo notes that many of them fail to consider the user's context: what they already know, what they care about, and what they find confusing.
"For example, when reading an abstract about a new treatment for diabetes, a newly diagnosed patient might want a basic understanding of the condition and available therapies, whereas a long-term patient may be more interested in side effects, cost, or how the treatment fits into their ongoing management plan," said Guo. "Without personalization, summaries risk being either too vague to be useful or too technical to be understood, potentially leading to confusion, disengagement, or making poor health decisions."
Guo's project explores how natural language processing (NLP) systems can be more effectively designed to address the unique information needs of individuals, ranging from patients and caregivers to interdisciplinary scientists, tailoring them to reflect users' diverse backgrounds, preferences, and levels of expertise.
Her broader research program focuses on designing NLP systems that are not only accurate and trustworthy, but also accessible and actionable across a range of user groups. The ultimate goal is to explore new ways of making health information more accessible and actionable for everyone involved in healthcare.
Guo earned her PhD in biomedical and health informatics from the University of Washington, her master's in epidemiology from Johns Hopkins University, and her MBBS (equivalent to an MD) from Capital Medical University in China. With a unique blend of medical training and NLP expertise, Guo is poised to address real-world healthcare challenges through AI and data science.