title: Semantic retrieval and navigation in clinical document collections.
abstract: Patients with chronic diseases undergo numerous in- and outpatient treatment periods, and therefore many documents accumulate in their electronic records. We report on an on-going project focussing on the semantic enrichment of medical texts, in order to support recall-oriented navigation across a patient's complete documentation. A document pool of 1,696 de-identified discharge summaries was used for prototyping. A natural language processing toolset for document annotation (based on the text-mining framework UIMA) and indexing (Solr) was used to support a browser-based platform for document import, search and navigation. The integrated search engine combines free text and concept-based querying, supported by dynamically generated facets (diagnoses, procedures, medications, lab values, and body parts). The prototype demonstrates the feasibility of semantic document enrichment within document collections of a single patient. Originally conceived as an add-on for the clinical workplace, this technology could also be adapted to support personalised health record platforms, as well as cross-patient search for cohort building and other secondary use scenarios.
authors.affiliation: Institute for Medical Informatics, Statistics and Documentation, Medical University of Graz, Austria.
authors.forename: Markus
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Kreuzthaler
authors.affiliation: Averbis GmbH, Freiburg, Germany.
authors.forename: Philipp
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Daumke
authors.affiliation: Institute for Medical Informatics, Statistics and Documentation, Medical University of Graz, Austria.
authors.forename: Stefan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Schulz
mesh_terms: D057225:Data Mining / Q000379:methods*; D057286:Electronic Health Records / Q000458:organization & administration*; D000069550:Machine Learning; D009323:Natural Language Processing; D012660:Semantics; D012984:Software; D014584:User-Computer Interface; D018875:Vocabulary, Controlled; D064878:Web Browser