The Unified Medical Language System SPECIALIST Lexicon and Lexical Tools: Development and applications

Document Type

Journal Article

Role

Author

Published In

Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association

Volume

27

Issue

10

First Page

1600

Last Page

1605

Publication Date

5-20-2020

Abstract

Natural language processing (NLP) plays a vital role in modern medical informatics. It converts narrative text or unstructured data into knowledge by analyzing and extracting concepts. A comprehensive lexical system is the foundation to the success of NLP applications and an essential component at the beginning of the NLP pipeline. The SPECIALIST Lexicon and Lexical Tools, distributed by the National Library of Medicine as one of the Unified Medical Language System Knowledge Sources, provides an underlying resource for many NLP applications. This article reports recent developments of 3 key components in the Lexicon. The core NLP operation of Unified Medical Language System concept mapping is used to illustrate the importance of these developments. Our objective is to provide generic, broad coverage and a robust lexical system for NLP applications. A novel multiword approach and other planned developments are proposed.

Keywords

unified medical language system, natural language processing, lexicon, lexical tools, NLP tools

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