Thank you for sharing this resource. At our organization, we also follow a human-in-the-loop-or what I often refer to as a human-at-the-core-approach to translation. This practice supports regulatory requirements, but more importantly, it helps ensure that translated content is accurate, high quality, and truly supports understanding, trust, and positive experiences within the communities we serve.
AI-powered translation has made meaningful advances, and it can be a useful tool when applied thoughtfully. That said, performance varies widely across languages and subject areas, and for many languages there remain well-documented gaps in accuracy. Without qualified human review and approval, there is a real risk of introducing errors or bias into patient-facing content-risks that can undermine health literacy and, in some cases, cause harm.
For that reason, we apply the same standards to AI translation that we do to any other drafting tool: if we would not publish AI created English content without review, we should not rely on machine translation outputs without human validation by a trained professional. Ultimately, accountability for patient communication rests with clinicians and organizations, not with the technology itself. Maintaining a human-centered review process is one important way we can uphold both patient safety and trust while responsibly exploring new tools.
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Sonja Casey Lara
Translation Program Manager
Fairview Health Servicessonja.caseylara@fairview.org------------------------------
Original Message:
Sent: 04-06-2026 07:33 AM
From: Connie Feiler
Subject: AI translation
Hi Cori,
I was searching for regulatory guidance on using AI to translate documents. I found this pubmed article referring to HHS recommendations:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12918658/#:~:text=Level%202:%20formal%20regulations,is%20given%20to%20a%20patient.&text='%20This%20creates%20a%20regulatory%20'human,efficiency%20gains%20of%20AI%20deployment.
Here's the section that was relevant:
Level 2: formal regulations from HHS:
At the second level are formal regulations, which implement statutory requirements through detailed rulemaking. The 2024 HHS Final Rule implementing Section 1557 provided the first explicit guidance on machine translation (referred to here as AI translation). This regulation introduced a critical distinction between 'critical' and 'non-critical' documents. For critical documents-a category that includes consent forms, discharge instructions and notices of eligibility18-the regulation mandates that 'a qualified human translator must review and correct the content before it is given to a patient.19' This creates a regulatory 'human-in-the-loop' floor for high-stakes clinical communication. However, this regulation was developed based on the performance capabilities of older model generations and defaults to a manual review process that may negate the efficiency gains of AI deployment.
Nursing Consultant
Wolters Kluwer Patient Education
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Connie Feiler
Nursing Consultant
Wolters Kluwer
Pittsburgh, PA United States
Connie.Feiler@wolterskluwer.com
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