Architectural requirements for a multipurpose natural language processor in the clinical environment

A considerable amount of research has been concerned with the development of natural language systems to automate the encoding of clinical information that occurs in textual form. The task is very complex, and not many language processors are used routinely within clinical information systems. Those systems that are operational, have been implemented in narrow domains for particular applications. For a system to be truly useful, it should be designed so that it could be widely used within the clinical environment. This paper examines architectural requirements we have identified as being necessary for portability and describes the architecture of the system we developed. Our system was designed so that it could be used in different domains to serve a variety of applications. It has been integrated with the clinical information system at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center where it routinely encodes clinical information from radiological reports of patients.