Automatically tracking diabetes using information in physicians’ notes

Patient consultations recorded as voice dictations are frequently stored electronically as transcriptions in free text format. The information stored in free text is not computer tractable. Advances in artificial intelligence permit the conversion of free text into structured information that allows statistical analysis.

Objective

This paper describes DMReporter, a medical language processing system that automatically extracts information pertaining to diabetes (demography, numerical measurement values, medication list, and diagnoses) from the free text in physicians’ notes and stores it in a structured format in a MYSQL database.