MQAF: a medical question-answering framework.

Traditional question-answering programs are difficult to write and require: question analysis, document identification, and text extraction. Thousands of new documents are created daily, making it difficult to determine which has useful data. MQAF facilitates the process by limiting the factors used in the process: a Lexicon (the UMLS), a medical term identifier (MetaMap), a Question Taxonomy, and a Medical Information website that is both evidence-based and kept up-to-date.