Follow-up Recommendation Detection on Radiology Reports with Incidental Pulmonary Nodules

Stud Health Technol Inform. 2015:216:1028.

Abstract

The management of follow-up recommendations is fundamental for the appropriate care of patients with incidental pulmonary findings. The lack of communication of these important findings can result in important actionable information being lost in healthcare provider electronic documents. This study aims to analyze follow-up recommendations in radiology reports containing pulmonary incidental findings by using Natural Language Processing and Regular Expressions. Our evaluation highlights the different follow-up recommendation rates for oncology and non-oncology patient cohorts. The results reveal the need for a context-sensitive approach to tracking different patient cohorts in an enterprise-wide assessment.

MeSH terms

  • Data Mining / methods
  • Decision Support Systems, Clinical / organization & administration*
  • Diagnosis, Computer-Assisted / methods*
  • Humans
  • Illinois / epidemiology
  • Incidental Findings
  • Machine Learning
  • Natural Language Processing*
  • Pilot Projects
  • Radiography, Abdominal / classification
  • Radiography, Abdominal / statistics & numerical data*
  • Radiology Information Systems / classification
  • Radiology Information Systems / supply & distribution*
  • Referral and Consultation / statistics & numerical data*
  • Reproducibility of Results
  • Sensitivity and Specificity
  • Terminology as Topic
  • Vocabulary, Controlled