A Dataset and Resources for Identifying Patient Health Literacy Information from Clinical Notes

Researchers created HEALIX, the first public dataset of real clinical notes annotated to identify patients' health literacy levels (low, normal, or high). Health literacy—a patient's ability to understand health information—is important for medical outcomes, but current screening tools are clunky and don't work well with electronic health records. The team tested whether large language models could automatically detect health literacy from clinical notes, showing this approach could be a practical alternative to traditional screening.