title: Voice-dictated versus typed-in clinician notes: linguistic properties and the potential implications on natural language processing.
abstract: In this study, we comparatively examined the linguistic properties of narrative clinician notes created through voice dictation versus those directly entered by clinicians via a computer keyboard. Intuitively, the nature of voice-dictated notes would resemble that of natural language, while typed-in notes may demonstrate distinctive language features for reasons such as intensive usage of acronyms. The study analyses were based on an empirical dataset retrieved from our institutional electronic health records system. The dataset contains 30,000 voice-dictated notes and 30,000 notes that were entered manually; both were encounter notes generated in ambulatory care settings. The results suggest that between the narrative clinician notes created via these two different methods, there exists a considerable amount of lexical and distributional differences. Such differences could have a significant impact on the performance of natural language processing tools, necessitating these two different types of documents being differentially treated.
authors.affiliation: School of Public Health Department of Health Management and Policy, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA.
authors.forename: Kai
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Zheng
authors.forename: Qiaozhu
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Mei
authors.forename: Lei
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.forename: Frank J
authors.initials: FJ
authors.lastname: Manion
authors.forename: Ulysses J
authors.initials: UJ
authors.lastname: Balis
authors.forename: David A
authors.initials: DA
authors.lastname: Hanauer
mesh_terms: D016287:Computer Peripherals; D057286:Electronic Health Records; D006801:Humans; D008037:Linguistics; D008499:Medical Records; D033262:Narration; D009323:Natural Language Processing; D049250:Speech Recognition Software; D014584:User-Computer Interface