Precision in Parsing: Evaluation of an Open-Source Named Entity Recognizer (NER) in Veterinary Oncology

Integrating Artificial Intelligence (AI) through Natural Language Processing (NLP) can improve veterinary medical oncology clinical record analytics. Named Entity Recognition (NER), a critical component of NLP, can facilitate efficient data extraction and automated labelling for research and clinical decision-making. This study assesses the efficacy of the Bio-Epidemiology-NER (BioEN), an open-source NER developed using human epidemiological and medical data, on veterinary medical oncology records. The NER's performance was compared with manual annotations by a veterinary medical oncologist and a veterinary intern. Evaluation metrics included Jaccard similarity, intra-rater reliability, ROUGE scores, and standard NER performance metrics (precision, recall, F1-score). Results indicate poor direct translatability to veterinary medical oncology record text and room for improvement in the NER's performance, with precision, recall, and F1-score suggesting a marginally better alignment with the oncologist than the intern. While challenges remain, these insights contribute to the ongoing development of AI tools tailored for veterinary healthcare and highlight the need for veterinary-specific models.