Semantic categorization of Chinese eligibility criteria in clinical trials using machine learning methods.

Background: Semantic categorization analysis of clinical trials eligibility criteria based on natural language processing technology is crucial for the task of optimizing clinical trials design and building automated patient recruitment system. However, most of related researches focused on English...

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Published in:BMC Medical Informatics & Decision Making Vol. 21; no. 1; pp. 1 - 13
Main Authors: Zong, Hui, Yang, Jinxuan, Zhang, Zeyu, Li, Zuofeng, Zhang, Xiaoyan
Format: research Journal Article
Published: BioMed Central 4/15/2021
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
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      dt: 4/15/2021
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      pub: BioMed Central
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        atl: Semantic categorization of Chinese eligibility criteria in clinical trials using machine learning methods.
      aug:
        au:
          Zong, Hui
          Yang, Jinxuan
          Zhang, Zeyu
          Li, Zuofeng
          Zhang, Xiaoyan
        affil: Research Center for Translational Medicine, Shanghai East Hospital, School of Life Sciences and Technology, Tongji University, 200092, Shanghai, China
      sug:
        subj:
          Semantics
          Unified Medical Language System
          China
          Pilot Studies
          Natural Language Processing
          Human
          Comparative Studies
          Multicenter Studies
          Evaluation Research
          Validation Studies
          Scales
      ab: Background: Semantic categorization analysis of clinical trials eligibility criteria based on natural language processing technology is crucial for the task of optimizing clinical trials design and building automated patient recruitment system. However, most of related researches focused on English eligibility criteria, and to the best of our knowledge, there are no researches studied the Chinese eligibility criteria. Thus in this study, we aimed to explore the semantic categories of Chinese eligibility criteria.Methods: We downloaded the clinical trials registration files from the website of Chinese Clinical Trial Registry (ChiCTR) and extracted both the Chinese eligibility criteria and corresponding English eligibility criteria. We represented the criteria sentences based on the Unified Medical Language System semantic types and conducted the hierarchical clustering algorithm for the induction of semantic categories. Furthermore, in order to explore the classification performance of Chinese eligibility criteria with our developed semantic categories, we implemented multiple classification algorithms, include four baseline machine learning algorithms (LR, NB, kNN, SVM), three deep learning algorithms (CNN, RNN, FastText) and two pre-trained language models (BERT, ERNIE).Results: We totally developed 44 types of semantic categories, summarized 8 topic groups, and investigated the average incidence and prevalence in 272 hepatocellular carcinoma related Chinese clinical trials. Compared with the previous proposed categories in English eligibility criteria, 13 novel categories are identified in Chinese eligibility criteria. The classification result shows that most of semantic categories performed quite well, the pre-trained language model ERNIE achieved best performance with macro-average F1 score of 0.7980 and micro-average F1 score of 0.8484.Conclusion: As a pilot study of Chinese eligibility criteria analysis, we developed the 44 semantic categories by hierarchical clustering algorithms for the first times, and validated the classification capacity with multiple classification algorithms.
      pubtype: Academic Journal
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    language: English
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