Finding relevant free-text radiology reports at scale with IBM Watson Content Analytics: a feasibility study in the UK NHS

Abstract

We were able to implement IBM Watson within a UK NHS context and demonstrate effective results that could provide clinicians with an automatic safety net which highlights clinically important information within free-text documents. Our results suggest that currently available technologies such as IBM Watson Content Analytics already have the potential to address information overload and improve clinical safety and that solutions developed in one hospital and country may be transportable to different hospitals and countries. Our study was limited to exploring technical aspects of the feasibility of one industry solution and we recognise that healthcare text analytics research is a fast-moving field. That said, we believe our study suggests that text analytics is sufficiently advanced to be implemented within industry solutions that can improve clinical safety.