A Natural Language Processing Approach to Automated Highlighting of New Information in Clinical Notes

Applied Sciences

Pei-Ju Lee¹  Ching-Ping Chao¹  Sheng-Feng Sung²  Ling-Chien Hung²  Yu-Hsiang Su² 

[1] Department of Information Management and Institute of Healthcare Information Management, National Chung Cheng University, Chiayi County 62102, Taiwan;Division of Neurology, Department of Internal Medicine, Ditmanson Medical Foundation Chia-Yi Christian Hospital, Chiayi City 60002, Taiwan;

关键词: bigram language model;    electronic medical records;    information overload;    natural language processing;   

DOI  :  10.3390/app10082824

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Electronic medical records (EMRs) have been used extensively in most medical institutions for more than a decade in Taiwan. However, information overload associated with rapid accumulation of large amounts of clinical narratives has threatened the effective use of EMRs. This situation is further worsened by the use of “copying and pasting”, leading to lots of redundant information in clinical notes. This study aimed to apply natural language processing techniques to address this problem. New information in longitudinal clinical notes was identified based on a bigram language model. The accuracy of automated identification of new information was evaluated using expert annotations as the reference standard. A two-stage cross-over user experiment was conducted to evaluate the impact of highlighting of new information on task demands, task performance, and perceived workload. The automated method identified new information with an F1 score of 0.833. The user experiment found a significant decrease in perceived workload associated with a significantly higher task performance. In conclusion, automated identification of new information in clinical notes is feasible and practical. Highlighting of new information enables healthcare professionals to grasp key information from clinical notes with less perceived workload.

【 授权许可】

Unknown