Automated Coding of Patient Discharge Summaries Using Conceptual Graphs

D. Delamarre; A. Burgun; L. P. Seka; P. Le Beux

doi:10.1055/s-0038-1634611

Methods of Information in Medicine, Table of Contents

Methods Inf Med 1995; 34(04): 345-351
DOI: 10.1055/s-0038-1634611

Original Article

Schattauer GmbH

Automated Coding of Patient Discharge Summaries Using Conceptual Graphs

Authors

D. Delamarre

¹Laboratoire Informatique Médicale, Faculté de Médecine, Université de Rennes I, France
A. Burgun

¹Laboratoire Informatique Médicale, Faculté de Médecine, Université de Rennes I, France
L. P. Seka

¹Laboratoire Informatique Médicale, Faculté de Médecine, Université de Rennes I, France
P. Le Beux

¹Laboratoire Informatique Médicale, Faculté de Médecine, Université de Rennes I, France

Abstract

Abstract:

In medicine, as in other domains, indexing and classification is a natural human task which is used for information retrieval and representation. In the medical field, encoding of patient discharge summaries is still a manual time-consuming task. This paper describes an automated coding system of patient discharge summaries from the field of coronary diseases into the ICD-9-CM classification. The system is developed in the context of the European AIM MENELAS project, a natural-language understanding system which uses the conceptual-graph formalism. Indexing is performed by using a two-step processing scheme; a first recognition stage is implemented by a matching procedure and a secondary selection stage is made according to the coding priorities. We show the general features of the necessary translation of the classification terms in the conceptual-graph model, and for the coding rules compliance. An advantage of the system is to provide an objective evaluation and assessment procedure for natural-language understanding.

Keywords:

Natural-Language Processing - Conceptual Graphs - Knowledge-Based System - Indexing - Coronary Diseases - ICD-9-CM

Full Text

References

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