Transforming primary healthcare through natural language processing and big data analytics

Delivering quality care to an ageing population is a growing challenge for primary care. Learning health systems are a promising solution, but Shemtob and colleagues note that poor data quality is a barrier to realising their potential.1 We think that natural language processing (NLP) is a means of efficient data collection.Over 80% of healthcare documentation exists in electronic health records as unstructured free text, and manual extraction has proved resource intensive and unreliable.23 NLP does not require data to be collected in a specific structure or for clinicians to retrospectively codify their notes. It significantly reduces documentation time, compared with a manual expert review, while maintaining data usability.4Reducing administrative burdens by implementing NLP derived dictation tools would aid a long desired return to patient centred consultations.56 Furthermore, documenting in electronic health records was found to take up more than half of a general practitioner’s workday; many feel these time constraints…
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