Natural Language Processing

For us healthcare professionals, there is a lot of interest and excitement around natural language processing. Why? Let's dig in... :D

What is it?

Natural Language Processing (NLP) is a branch of AI that gives computers the ability to understand, interpret, and generate human language.

Incredibly, this includes both text and spoken words... I know what you're thinking -

Can this beasty scrape and summate patient notes?

What about auto recording of clinics?

Of course it can, and much much more - in fact a lot of companies are trying to (and actually have already) built software that does it.

But what data can I use?

Oh year, one of the big(gest) challenges is access to the data. As anyone who has ever tried to access patient data in the NHS for any kind of project, you might as well be trying to steal the federal gold reserves whilst they have been securely imprisoned on an island off the coast of San Franscisco, with a ring of fire around it.

(Yes I used American references for wealth and alcatraz, but I don't know of the UK's equivalent, so I threw in a British authors book title :D ).

However, data access is an entire beasty of its own I'll come to in another post.

What am I trying to do with it?

Make something cool obviously.

Build an AI chatbot system for patients and doctors.

For the patients, I want it to link to appropriate (and evidence based trusted resources), so when they want to ask a question about their breast cancer diagnosis and treatment, it's actually accurate, citing Macmillan or Cancer Research UK ect.

(Rather than the random google link finding a random website post from "Storm from Cheshire" who has proved that CBT oil is a more effective cure, or telling you that this special mix of black pepper and tumeric powder will stop it spreading without the need for any nasty chemotherapy. And she's got a sale for only £30 a pot. Bargain.)

For Doctors, it will provide uptodate information on diagnosis, treatment and guidelines again from reputable sources. So no longer should we need to scrape the respective guidelines and british national forumalry for information on our prescriptions. We just ask my AI bot :)

So what now?

I'll take you through my journey, using an open source technology called 'haystack by deepset'.

An exremely cool open source large language model framework.

So what are you waiting for... let's get into it.