electronically, but automatically remains problematic

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Multiple Uses of the Oblique Stroke (slash, "/") in Emergency Department. Text: Developing Grammar Rules for Natural Language Processing. 'Debbie A.
Multiple Uses of the Oblique Stroke (slash, "/") in Emergency Department Text: Developing Grammar Rules for Natural Language Processing 'Debbie A. Travers, MSN, RN, C, 'Stephanie W. Haas, PhD, 2Stephen M. Downs, MD, MS

'University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC,21ndiana University, Indianapolis, IN

Clinicians use abbreviations and punctuation in narratives to describe patient findings, treatnent and progress. Increasingly, such notes are stored electronically, but automatically processing text with abbreviations remains problematic. We developed grammars to process clinical terms that contained the oblique stroke (slash,"/'). Then we used UMLS lexical programs

1067-5027/01/$5.00 © 2001 AMIA, Inc.

to normalize the terms. The goal of the project was to maximize term matching with existing UMLS medical concepts. None of the terms processed only with the UMLS normalization programs matched a UMLS concept. 58% of the terms processed with the "slash" grammar rules, plus the UMLS normalization programs, matched a UMLS concept.

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