Journal of medical Internet research
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J. Med. Internet Res. · Jan 2020
ReviewSystematic Evaluation of Research Progress on Natural Language Processing in Medicine Over the Past 20 Years: Bibliometric Study on PubMed.
Natural language processing (NLP) is an important traditional field in computer science, but its application in medical research has faced many challenges. With the extensive digitalization of medical information globally and increasing importance of understanding and mining big data in the medical field, NLP is becoming more crucial. ⋯ NLP is in a period of robust development in the medical field, with an average of approximately 100 publications annually. Electronic medical records were the most used research materials, but social media such as Twitter have become important research materials since 2015. Cancer (24.94%, 103/413) was the most common subject area in NLP-assisted medical research on diseases, with breast cancers (23.30%, 24/103) and lung cancers (14.56%, 15/103) accounting for the highest proportions of studies. Columbia University and the talents trained therein were the most active and prolific research forces on NLP in the medical field.