NLP, Just What the Doctor Ordered
September 2, 2011
The article, Natural Language Processing Best for EMR Data, on Nurse.com, explains how a new study utilizing natural language processing (NLP) showed an increase in identifying patient safety concerns.
The information reviewed was vast (almost 3,000 patients) and covered 20 measures of “potential adverse effects during hospitalization” including renal failure and pneumonia. By using NLP, the hospital system was able to get fast and accurate information. The article quotes the authors of the study as explaining the benefits of NLP as,
’The development of automated approaches, such as natural language processing, that extract specific medical concepts from textual medical documents that do not rely on discharge codes offers a powerful alternative to either unreliable administrative data or labor-intensive, expensive manual chart reviews.’
The project was a success with NLP offering much more reliable data percentages in all categories of patient safety. The article hypothesizes on the potential of the technology identifying patients ‘at risk’ upon entering the hospital.
This report is impressive and there is no doubt that NLP can help hospitals sort through their mounds of data, but that doesn’t mean that NLP is the answer to all data problems. Hospitals are unique in many ways and their data tends to be very factual. For analysis of that nature, NLP can be very helpful. But to assume it can help all industries is naïve.
Catherine Lamsfuss, September 2, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
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