Extracting timing and status descriptors for colonoscopy testing from electronic medical records.
Colorectal cancer (CRC) screening rates are low despite confirmed benefits. The authors investigated the use of natural language processing (NLP) to identify previous colonoscopy screening in electronic records from a random sample of 200 patients at least 50 years old. The authors developed algorithms to recognize temporal expressions and 'status indicators', such as 'patient refused', or 'test scheduled'. The new methods were added to the existing KnowledgeMap concept identifier system [...]
Author(s): Denny, Joshua C, Peterson, Josh F, Choma, Neesha N, Xu, Hua, Miller, Randolph A, Bastarache, Lisa, Peterson, Neeraja B
DOI: 10.1136/jamia.2010.004804