Amazon Web Services (AWS) is going to apply its natural language processing facility, Comprehend, in the field of medicine. The company defined Amazon Comprehend Medical as an addition to Comprehend for medical users at the AWS’ re: Invent conference.
The significance of the facility is that it is one more step towards integrating machine learning and artificial intelligence in the healthcare department. Patients and physicians time will be saved by having automatic X-rays, MRI analysis and medical record reading. Comprehend can design topics, perform sentiment analysis, identify language and take out phrases.
According to the blog post, AWS claimed that it had to develop a model of Comprehend to account for anatomy, medications, medical terms, conditions and many other healthcare terms. For example, AWS had to train the latest API, add language to healthcare and do programming to secure protected medical data. Although Comprehend Medical can secure medical data, the system is not compliant, it is only HIPAA eligible. HIPAA compliance rests on how a firm may use AWS facilities.
AWS mentioned:
“A word of caution: Amazon Comprehend Medical may not accurately identify protected health information in all circumstances and does not meet the requirements for de-identification of protected health information under HIPAA. You are responsible for reviewing any output provided by Amazon Comprehend Medical to ensure it meets your needs.”
AWS did mention that its Comprehend facility is HIPAA eligible. Use cases in medical would vary from revenue cycle management, clinical decision support, health platforms, and trail management.
However, Comprehend Medical can be beneficial for many use cases. The system does find private recognizable information and flags it. Comprehend Medical is also modeled to comprehend interactions among things such as conditions and dosage.
