The Role Of Natural Language Processing In Modern Healthcare

Natural language processing (NLP) has applications across several industries.

Unsurprisingly, the healthcare field is no different. The involvement of NLP in healthcare promises to increase even further in the future.

Natural Language Processing, or NLP, is a subfield of AI that carries out text generation, automated manipulation of natural language in speech and text, and a few other applications. NLP is a vital cog of AI, which promises to take the intelligent technology to newer heights in the future. Modern healthcare has benefited greatly from NLP and will continue to do so. Here, we will see some of the ways in which the inclusion of NLP in healthcare aids doctors, patients, and others in the field:

Improving Clinical Documentation in Hospitals

As we know, hospitals and clinics need to maintain and constantly update their records regarding patients from time to time. NLP-assisted clinical documentation enables doctors and other staff in hospitals and clinics to focus on their main tasks—patient care, customer service—and letting NLP handle the arduous task of updating EHRs for each patient. NLP-powered healthcare tools enable them to use the system's text-to-speech conversion abilities for efficient data entry. In combination with IoT-powered tools such as sound-detection sensors, NLP can use its speech recognition and linguistic abilities to greatly improve documentation work in hospitals.

Facilitating Root Cause Analytics in Healthcare

The inclusion of NLP in healthcare can also involve tools like predictive analysis systems to identify and resolve health problems amongst the general public. Healthcare officials can use a combination of NLP and AI to scan through vast swathes of electronic medical records present digitally to classify individuals based on their ethnicities, location and other population-related factors. These classifications can be used to detect and analyze the various health issues faced by people in certain regions or by ones belonging to specific ethnicities. Governments and traditional healthcare bodies are currently unable to get to the bottom of certain unexplained socio-cultural medical conditions in people, but NLP and predictive analysis can open new avenues of research to resolve such root cause problems.

Assisting with Clinical Trial Matching

As we know, finding the right patients for carrying out clinical trials of new medicines or vaccines can be a challenge for researchers. NLP-powered systems and computer vision tools can assist healthcare experts with the same. Such systems quickly scan through the past medical records of such patients before confirming whether they are fit to be a part of trials or not.

NLP can provide stellar support to AI systems in healthcare with its incredible text-generation and linguistic capabilities. Although the contributions of NLP in healthcare may not be flashy enough for some, the technology, slowly but surely, is revolutionizing the field.