Amazon Takes on Unstructured EHR Data with Machine Learning, NLP

Amazon is taking another big step into the healthcare industry by announcing a new machine learning service that can extract meaningful information from unstructured EHR data and free-text clinical notes. Amazon Comprehend Medical will allow developers to comb through unstructured electronic health record data to pull out key clinical terms related to a patient’s diagnoses, medications, symptoms, treatments, and other interactions with the healthcare system. The company hopes the new offering will democratize access to advanced machine learning by reducing the need for custom-built solutions and extensive one-off programming for specific projects. “The majority of health and patient data is stored today as unstructured medical text, such as medical notes, prescriptions, audio interview transcripts, and pathology and radiology reports,” explained Dr. Taha A. Kass-Hout and Dr. Matt Wood.