Classification of cancer stage from free-text histology reports.

This article investigates the classification of a patient's lung cancer stage based on analysis of their free-text medical reports. The system uses natural language processing to transform the report text, including identification of UMLS terms and detection of negated findings. The transformed report is then classified using statistical machine learning techniques.

Collection of cancer stage data by classifying free-text medical reports.

Cancer staging provides a basis for planning clinical management, but also allows for meaningful analysis of cancer outcomes and evaluation of cancer care services. Despite this, stage data in cancer registries is often incomplete, inaccurate, or simply not collected. This article describes a prototype software system (Cancer Stage Interpretation System, CSIS) that automatically extracts cancer staging information from medical reports.

Preterm birth a long distance from home and its significant social and financial stress.

The present paper reports a retrospective cohort of preterm infants admitted to our hospital who delivered outside the normal geographical catchment area of the mother's local level three neonatal nursery. Nineteen mothers had 21 preterm infants (23.1-34.