A method of extracting the number of trial participants from abstracts describing randomized controlled trials.

We have developed a method for extracting the number of trial participants from abstracts describing randomized controlled trials (RCTs); the number of trial participants may be an indication of the reliability of the trial. The method depends on statistical natural language processing. The number o...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Publicado en:Journal of Telemedicine & Telecare Vol. 14; no. 7; pp. 354 - 359
Autores principales: Hansen MJ, Rasmussen Nø, Chung G
Formato: research Journal Article
Publicado: Sage Publications Inc. Oct2008
Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
Descripción
Sumario:We have developed a method for extracting the number of trial participants from abstracts describing randomized controlled trials (RCTs); the number of trial participants may be an indication of the reliability of the trial. The method depends on statistical natural language processing. The number of interest was determined by a binary supervised classification based on a support vector machine algorithm. The method was trialled on 223 abstracts in which the number of trial participants was identified manually to act as a gold standard. Automatic extraction resulted in 2 false-positive and 19 false-negative classifications. The algorithm was capable of extracting the number of trial participants with an accuracy of 97% and an F-measure of 0.84. The algorithm may improve the selection of relevant articles in regard to question-answering, and hence may assist in decision-making.