Natural Language Processing for Patient Information

Despite the proven cost effectiveness of patient education, there is still a well-documented information gap between doctors and patients. Many practitioners are looking toward tailored, computer-based patient health information and advice to fill this gap. In this paper, I first describe an intelligent interactive patient information system, the Migraine system, which I helped develop before the widespread adoption of the world wide web (WWW). I then describe how the WWW and recent advances in natural language technology may be martialled to build the next generation of intelligent personalized patient information delivery systems on the web.