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Interoperation of NLP-Based Systems with Clinical Databases

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Encyclopedia of Database Systems

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Definition

Natural language processing (NLP) is the automation of processes to interpret and understand meaning in human communications. In the life sciences, NLP assists in wide-scale storage and retrieval of specific “bundles” of clinical data embedded in patient charts which are commonly “free text”. Both expert-system and statistical based NLPs have been in use in biomedicine for over three decades and some have shown an expert-like level of accuracy [1,3,6]. With the advent of electronic medical records, the sheer amount of data necessitates automated means for proper analysis to aid in patient care and research purposes.

Key Points

NLP commonly relies on indexing/tokenization, which is a process of breaking down text strings into data bundles. These bundles then need to be understood, which can be accomplished by mapping to clinical ontology. These clinical ontologies provide a means of disambiguating and organizing the mapped concepts to permit more...

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Recommended Reading

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

    Yves A. Lussier & Matthew G. Crowson

Authors
  1. Yves A. Lussier
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  2. Matthew G. Crowson
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yves A. Lussier .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Georgia Institute of Technology College of Computing, Atlanta, Georgia, USA

    Ling Liu

  2. University of Waterloo School of Computer Science, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

    M. Tamer Özsu

Section Editor information

  1. Director, Clinical Programs, CIGNA Healthcare, Bloomfield, Connecticut, USA

    Vipul Kashyap

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© 2016 Springer Science+Business Media LLC

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Lussier, Y.A., Crowson, M.G. (2016). Interoperation of NLP-Based Systems with Clinical Databases. In: Liu, L., Özsu, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Database Systems. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-7993-3_208-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-7993-3_208-2

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4899-7993-3

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference Computer SciencesReference Module Computer Science and Engineering

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