AI in Healthcare: Seeking to provide Natural Language Processing tools to healthcare personnel

Applications for the first free course on clinical Natural Language Processing for students and professionals in healthcare and engineering in Chile are open until April 15 at: https://plnclinico.imfd.cl/

"One of the most significant challenges when trying to use different artificial intelligence tools in the healthcare field is that most of the clinical information about patients is written in free text," explains Fabian Villena, director of the Clinical Natural Language Processing Course. "Let's think, for example, about when a patient arrives at the emergency room. The team in charge is more concerned with the person's health problem than with writing correctly on the forms."

This also happens with abbreviations and codes used to identify different diseases and treatments, such as HTA, ACO, etc.: there are many variables, and when it comes to using this information for statistics, understanding phenomena, or distributing resources, it is complex and presents many challenges for healthcare personnel. 

A key tool for extracting valuable information from this data is the use of a technology called Natural Language Processing (NLP). "It is one of the tools used in the field of artificial intelligence, which allows us to process free text and also take the necessary precautions in terms of data privacy and security," explains the expert. 

The Clinical Natural Language Processing Course aims to train engineers or healthcare personnel in the understanding and application of key concepts in natural language processing (NLP). "It is a way of describing the transformative impact of these technologies on the health sciences." 

Over two days, academics will combine theory and practice in lectures and programming labs that will enable participants to develop fundamental skills in text processing, predictive modeling based on unstructured sources, and advanced techniques for information extraction using state-of-the-art tools in artificial intelligence. 

This course is offered free of charge thanks to funding provided by the Nations of The Americas Chapter of the Association of Computational Linguistics, Fondecyt, and the Millennium Institute Foundational Research on Data, and includes travel and accommodation funding for People are not from the Metropolitan Region and are selected in the application phase. 

Among those teaching the course are Fabian Villena, professor at the University of San Sebastián, dental surgeon, master's degree in medical informatics, and doctoral candidate in computer science; Jocelyn Dunstan Escudero, professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, physicist, master's degree in physics, and doctorate in applied mathematics; Claudio Aracena, professor at the University of San Sebastián, industrial civil engineer, master's degree in information technology, and PhD candidate in complex engineering systems; Luis Miranda, physicist and PhD candidate in computer science; and Tamara Quiroga, mathematical engineer, master's degree in economics, and PhD candidate in computer science.

The application process will be available until April 15, 2025, at: https://bit.ly/PLN-IMFD

More information at: https://plnclinico.imfd.cl/