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Natural language processing (NLP) in the biomedical domain focuses on understanding of the domain specific language and aims to facilitate dissemination and exchange of scientific and other information important to the progress of medicine and to the public health.

The NLP Working Group focuses on all sub-domains of biomedical NLP, including but not limited to: clinical NLP -- natural language processing methods to support healthcare by operationalizing clinical information contained in clinical narrative; processing of scientific literature, as well as gray literature, such as drug labels and clinical guidelines; and social media.

Areas of interest to the NLP working group include, but are not limited to:

  • Recognition and extraction of health-related information from text
  • Clinical document analysis
  • Development of tools and approaches to biomedical text understanding
  • Applications of biomedical NLP in practice
  • Addressing text understanding needs of clinicians, researchers and consumers

Mission

The mission of the AMIA Natural Language Processing Working Group is to facilitate communication, collaboration, training, and networking for researchers who develop, apply, and promote natural language processing in biomedical science, patient care, public health and biomedical education.

Vision

The ultimate goal of Natural Language Processing, an area of artificial intelligence, is to enable computers to analyze and use natural language at the level required for a task, be it detecting patients’ cancer stages during chart review, deriving knowledge from the literature or patient authored social media content. The NLP-WG vision for NLP in the biomedical domain is to support biomedical sciences, patient care, public health and biomedical education in a valuable manner.

Goals

AMIA NLP-WG aims to foster biomedical NLP research and applications, build a community of biomedical NLP researchers and practitioners, and establish connections among the researchers and practitioners from different scientific backgrounds and countries.

Working Group Activities

Past, Present and Future

  • Working group calls
  • Face to face meetings at the fall Annual Symposium and the spring Summits
  • Pre-symposium meetings
  • Webinars
  • Journal club
  • Collaboration with groups both inside and outside AMIA
  • Identification and dissemination of relevant funding opportunities
  • Industry-academic collaborations
  • Academic guidance for early stage researchers, e.g. doctoral students

Leadership

Profile image for Yanshan Wang, PhD

Yanshan Wang, PhD

Chair 2023-2024
Assistant Professor and Vice Chair of Research
University of Pittsburgh
Profile image for Satya Sahoo, PhD, FAMIA

Satya Sahoo, PhD, FAMIA

Vice Chair 2023-2024
Associate Professor
Case Western Reserve University
Profile image for Dina Demner-Fushman, MD

Dina Demner-Fushman, MD

Past Chair 2023
Investigator
National Library of Medicine
Profile image for Joseph Plasek

Joseph Plasek

Secretary 2023-2024