Developing a Framework for Natural Language Processing of Clinical Documents
Guest Speaker: Dr. Frank Meng, Assistant Professor of Medicine in General Internal Medicine, Boston University School of Medicine
Moderated by Dr. Guanglan Zhang, Associate Professor of Computer Science
Abstract: The capturing of increasingly more and more patient data by healthcare systems has enabled much innovative advancements in medical science and patient care through the application of artificial intelligence (AI) and other data-driven technologies. However, much useful information continues to be locked within free text documents, limiting the usefulness of the data to the elements that are already being captured in structured format. In this talk, I will present use cases for implementing natural language processing (NLP) systems that automate the extraction of information from clinical documents with the goal of illustrating the unique challenges of working within the healthcare domain. In addition, I will also provide an overview of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Healthcare System and the VA’s large-scale patient data repository.
Speaker Bio: Frank Meng, PhD is an Assistant Professor of Medicine in General Internal Medicine at the Boston University School of Medicine and the Associate Director of Clinical Informatics at the VA Boston Healthcare System. Before entering academia, Dr. Meng worked as a software engineer and a project leader at companies like IBM and The Aerospace Corporation. He began working in the medical field in 2013 when he first taught a course called “Introduction to medical informatics seminar” at UCLA. Since then he has published papers and given lectures, but his technological background is apparent in his writing, which includes big data and informatics as they related to the medical field.