# Bangla MedER: Multi-BERT ensemble approach for the recognition of Bangla medical entity

**Authors:** Tanjim Taharat Aurpa, Farzana Akter, Md. Mehedi Hasan, Shakil Ahmed, Shifat Ara Rafiq, Fatema Khan, Rubel Sheikh, Issa Atoum, Issa Atoum, Issa Atoum, Issa Atoum

PMC · DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0342558 · PLOS One · 2026-02-26

## TL;DR

This paper introduces a new Multi-BERT Ensemble approach to improve medical entity recognition in the Bangla language.

## Contribution

The novel Multi-BERT Ensemble model achieves 89.58% accuracy, significantly outperforming single-layer BERT for Bangla MedER.

## Key findings

- The Multi-BERT Ensemble model outperformed baseline models with 89.58% accuracy.
- The model provides an 11.80% accuracy improvement over the single-layer BERT model.
- A high-quality dataset was developed to support Bangla medical entity recognition.

## Abstract

Medical Entity Recognition (MedER) is an essential NLP task for extracting meaningful entities from the medical corpus. Nowadays, MedER-based research outcomes can remarkably contribute to the development of automated systems in the medical sector, ultimately enhancing patient care and outcomes. While extensive research has been conducted on MedER in English, low-resource languages like Bangla remain underexplored. Our work aims to bridge this gap. For Bangla medical entity recognition, this study first examined a number of transformer models, including BERT, DistilBERT, ELECTRA, and RoBERTa. We also propose a novel Multi-BERT Ensemble approach that outperformed all baseline models with the highest accuracy of 89.58%. Notably, it provides an 11.80% accuracy improvement over the single-layer BERT model, demonstrating its effectiveness for this task. A major challenge in MedER for low-resource languages is the lack of annotated datasets. To address this issue, we developed a high-quality dataset tailored for the Bangla MedER task. The dataset was used to evaluate the effectiveness of our model through multiple performance metrics, demonstrating its robustness and applicability. Our findings highlight the potential of Multi-BERT Ensemble models in improving MedER for Bangla and set the foundation for further advancements in low-resource medical NLP.

## Full-text entities

- **Genes:** COX8A (cytochrome c oxidase subunit 8A) [NCBI Gene 1351] {aka COX, COX8, COX8-2, COX8L, MC4DN15, VIII}
- **Diseases:** Symptom (MESH:D012816), COVID-19 (MESH:D000086382), infections (MESH:D007239), allergic reaction (MESH:D004342), chronic (MESH:D002908), itchy eyes and nose (MESH:D009669), sinus infections (MESH:D012852), Pain (MESH:D010146), inflammation (MESH:D007249), DS (MESH:D004194), skin and soft tissue infections (MESH:D018461), respiratory tract infections (MESH:D012141), swelling (MESH:D004487), CANcer (MESH:D009369), sexually transmitted diseases (MESH:D012749), pneumonia (MESH:D011014), common cold (MESH:D003139)
- **Chemicals:** PONE-D-25-12318R1 (-), Azithromycin (MESH:D017963), histamine (MESH:D006632), Prostaglandins (MESH:D011453), Aceclofenac (MESH:C056498), Chlorpheniramine (MESH:D002744)
- **Species:** Homo sapiens (human, species) [taxon 9606]

## Full text

_Full body text omitted from this summary view._ Fetch the complete paper as Markdown: https://tomesphere.com/paper/PMC12944717/full.md

## Figures

7 figures with captions in the complete paper: https://tomesphere.com/paper/PMC12944717/full.md

## References

22 references — full list in the complete paper: https://tomesphere.com/paper/PMC12944717/full.md

---
Source: https://tomesphere.com/paper/PMC12944717