title: Automated coding of patient discharge summaries using conceptual graphs.
abstract: In medicine, as in other domains, indexing and classification is a natural human task which is used for information retrieval and representation. In the medical field, encoding of patient discharge summaries is still a manual time-consuming task. This paper describes an automated coding system of patient discharge summaries from the field of coronary diseases into the ICD-9-CM classification. The system is developed in the context of the European AIM MENELAS project, a natural-language understanding system which uses the conceptual-graph formalism. Indexing is performed by using a two-step processing scheme; a first recognition stage is implemented by a matching procedure and a secondary selection stage is made according to the coding priorities. We show the general features of the necessary translation of the classification terms in the conceptual-graph model, and for the coding rules compliance. An advantage of the system is to provide an objective evaluation and assessment procedure for natural-language understanding.
mesh_terms: D001185:Artificial Intelligence; D003198:Computer Simulation; D003327:Coronary Disease / Q000145:classification; D001330:Electronic Data Processing; D005260:Female; D006751:Hospital Information Systems; D006753:Hospital Records; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009323:Natural Language Processing; D010351:Patient Discharge