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

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

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

This also happens with the abbreviations and codes used to identify different diseases and treatments, such as HTA, ACO, etc.: there are many variables and when trying to use this information for statistics, to understand phenomena or to distribute resources, it is complex and presents many challenges for health personnel. 

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

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

Over two days, academics will combine theory and practice in lectures and programming labs that will allow 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 LinguisticsFondecyt and the Millennium Institute Foundational Research on Data, and includes funding for travel and accommodation for People who are not from the Metropolitan Region and are selected in the application phase.

Among those teaching the course are Fabian Villena, Academic at Universidad San Sebastián, Surgeon-dentist, master's degree in medical informatics and doctoral candidate in computer science; Jocelyn Dunstan Escudero, Academic at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Physicist, master's degree in physics and doctorate in applied mathematics; Claudio Aracena, Academician at Universidad San Sebastián, Industrial Civil Engineer, Master's degree in Information Technology and PhD 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/