We are excited to announce a recent addition to the Office of Informatics’ self-service tool: SKAN NLP. The SKAN (Search Kibana Accessible Notes) NLP (Natural Language Processing) system can be used by researchers to build cohorts of patients by searching for words or phrases in clinical notes. Pathology and radiology notes were included when SKAN was first put into production. Researchers and healthcare professionals can now also access and search progress notes, further advancing their ability to extract valuable insights from medical data. Progress notes are a critical component of a patient's medical record, often containing detailed information about a patient's condition, treatment plans, and changes in health status over time. By incorporating progress notes into SKAN's searchable database, researchers can gain a more comprehensive understanding of patient care and outcomes.
"Being able to search free text clinical notes and narratives for research is an incredible resource not available at most academic medical institutions. On top of that, these texts are indexed such that most searches across the entire corpus complete in milliseconds!"
—Michael Horvath, MS, Lead Programmer for the Wake Forest CTSI
SKAN NLP is available to faculty, staff, and students who have completed their CITI training. A short tutorial video is available, and SKAN also supported through open consultation hours. To learn more visit the Data Extraction and Programming website or email ctsidata@wakehealth.edu.