Automated identification of patients with pulmonary nodules in an integrated health system using administrative health plan data, radiology reports, and natural language processing.

Introduction: Lung nodules are commonly encountered in clinical practice, yet little is known about their management in community settings. An automated method for identifying patients with lung nodules would greatly facilitate research in this area.

Methods: Using members of a large, community-based health plan from 2006 to 2010, we developed a method to identify patients with lung nodules, by combining five diagnostic codes, four procedural codes, and a natural language processing algorithm that performed free text searches of radiology transcripts.