title: Open Source Clinical NLP - More than Any Single System.
abstract: The number of Natural Language Processing (NLP) tools and systems for processing clinical free-text has grown as interest and processing capability have surged. Unfortunately any two systems typically cannot simply interoperate, even when both are built upon a framework designed to facilitate the creation of pluggable components. We present two ongoing activities promoting open source clinical NLP. The Open Health Natural Language Processing (OHNLP) Consortium was originally founded to foster a collaborative community around clinical NLP, releasing UIMA-based open source software. OHNLP's mission currently includes maintaining a catalog of clinical NLP software and providing interfaces to simplify the interaction of NLP systems. Meanwhile, Apache cTAKES aims to integrate best-of-breed annotators, providing a world-class NLP system for accessing clinical information within free-text. These two activities are complementary. OHNLP promotes open source clinical NLP activities in the research community and Apache cTAKES bridges research to the health information technology (HIT) practice.
authors.affiliation: Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN.
authors.forename: James
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Masanz
authors.affiliation: College of Pharmacy and Institute for Health Informatics, University of Minnesota.
authors.forename: Serguei V
authors.initials: SV
authors.lastname: Pakhomov
authors.affiliation: School of Biomedical Informatics in The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston.
authors.forename: Hua
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.affiliation: Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN.
authors.forename: Stephen T
authors.initials: ST
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.affiliation: Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN.
authors.forename: Christopher G
authors.initials: CG
authors.lastname: Chute
authors.affiliation: Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN.
authors.forename: Hongfang
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Liu