title: Developing and evaluating a simple, spreadsheet-based pathology report extraction system for cancer registrars.
abstract: Surgical pathology reports are essential for cancer registry. However, cancer registrars in Taiwan still code manually from the pathology reports written in unstructured free-text. The purpose of this study was to develop a cost-effective tool to automatically code the free-text reports with Microsoft-û Excel VBA too. The time and accuracy performances between these two approaches were compared. Results showed that the cost-effectiveness and time-saving of the system and the potentials of using spreadsheet tools for healthcare professionals.
authors.affiliation: Department of Tumor Center, Changhua Christian Hospital, Changhua, Taiwan.
authors.forename: Ya-Fen
authors.initials: YF
authors.lastname: Liang
authors.forename: Pei-Yi
authors.initials: PY
authors.lastname: Chu
authors.forename: Cheng-Shyong
authors.initials: CS
authors.lastname: Chang
authors.forename: Chen-Hsi
authors.initials: CH
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Polun
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Chang
mesh_terms: D001943:Breast Neoplasms / Q000473:pathology; D003362:Cost-Benefit Analysis; D017598:Efficiency, Organizational; D005568:Forms and Records Control / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D009369:Neoplasms; D010340:Pathology, Surgical; D012042:Registries; D012984:Software