Medicines Question Answering System, MeQA

TL;DR

MeQA is a pioneering Spanish-language system designed to automatically answer questions about medicines for human use, aiming to reduce the workload of online medical consultation platforms and improve patient information access.

Contribution

Introduces the first Spanish medicine question answering system, MeQA, addressing the need for automated responses to medicine-related inquiries in healthcare.

Findings

System can answer medicine questions automatically

Reduces workload for online medical consultation services

Improves access to medicine information for users

Abstract

In this paper we present the first system in Spanish capable of answering questions about medicines for human use, called MeQA (Medicines Question Answering), a project created by the Spanish Agency for Medicines and Health Products (AEMPS, for its acronym in Spanish). Online services that offer medical help have proliferated considerably, mainly due to the current pandemic situation due to COVID-19. For example, websites such as Doctoralia, Savia, or SaludOnNet, offer Doctor Answers type consultations, in which patients or users can send questions to doctors and specialists, and receive an answer in less than 24 hours. Many of the questions received are related to medicines for human use, and most can be answered through the leaflets. Therefore, a system such as MeQA capable of answering these types of questions automatically could alleviate the burden on these websites, and it would be of great use to such patients.