A Systematic Review of Natural Language Processing for Knowledge Management in Healthcare

TL;DR

This paper systematically reviews how Natural Language Processing techniques are applied to support knowledge management in healthcare, highlighting current methods, challenges, and future research directions.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive survey of NLP applications in healthcare knowledge management and proposes a conceptual model for knowledge extraction processes.

Findings

NLP techniques support knowledge creation, capture, sharing, and application in healthcare.

A conceptual model for NLP-based knowledge extraction in healthcare is proposed.

Discussion of key challenges and future research directions in the field.

Abstract

Driven by the visions of Data Science, recent years have seen a paradigm shift in Natural Language Processing (NLP). NLP has set the milestone in text processing and proved to be the preferred choice for researchers in the healthcare domain. The objective of this paper is to identify the potential of NLP, especially, how NLP is used to support the knowledge management process in the healthcare domain, making data a critical and trusted component in improving the health outcomes. This paper provides a comprehensive survey of the state-of-the-art NLP research with a particular focus on how knowledge is created, captured, shared, and applied in the healthcare domain. Our findings suggest, first, the techniques of NLP those supporting knowledge management extraction and knowledge capture processes in healthcare. Second, we propose a conceptual model for the knowledge extraction process through NLP. Finally, we discuss a set of issues, challenges, and proposed future research areas.