Patient Experience in Online Support Forums: Modeling Interpersonal Interactions and Medication Use
Chen, Annie T · 2013
Though there has been substantial research concerning the extraction of information from clinical notes, to date there has been less work concerning the extraction of useful information from patient-generated content. Using a dataset comprised of online support group discussion content, this paper investigates two dimensions that may be important in the extraction of patient-generated experiences from text; significant individuals/groups and medication use. With regard to the former, the paper describes an approach involving the pairing of important figures (e.g. family, husbands, doctors, etc.) and affect, and suggests possible applications of such techniques to research concerning online social support, as well as integration into search interfaces for patients. Additionally, the paper demonstrates the extraction of side effects and sentiment at different phases in patient medication use, e.g. adoption, current use, discontinuation and switching, and demonstrates the utility of such an application for drug safety monitoring in online discussion forums. 1