NLP Applications—Clinical Documents

This chapter examines the advancement of digitalization in healthcare, focusing on the critical role of natural language processing (NLP) in extracting valuable insights from clinical documents. We highlight five key applications of NLP using clinical documents: enhancing patient engagement, improving clinical decision support systems, aiding in healthcare quality management, optimizing revenue cycles, and facilitating clinical and translational research. Finally, we also discuss the growing importance and potential of generative Artificial Intelligence (AI), with particular emphasis on state-of-the-art large language models like ChatGPT and GPT-4, in using clinical documents for the healthcare applications.