4 Ways John Snow Labs is Raising the Bar for NLP in Healthcare

Natural Language Processing (NLP) has been a technology to watch over the past few years, but in 2020 it emerged as a mission-critical tool for businesses.

CIO Review

Natural Language Processing (NLP) has been a technology to watch over the past few years, but in 2020 it emerged as a mission-critical tool for businesses. With the advent of dispersed workforces, closed brick-and-mortar stores, and overwhelmed healthcare systems, NLP has helped enable solutions from virtual assistants and customer service chatbots, to automating mundane tasks and aiding in vaccine development—and the enterprise is taking notice. In fact, 53% of respondents from a recent global survey reported their NLP budget was at least 10% higher this year compared to 2019, with 31% stating their budget was at least 30% higher than the previous year.

The investment in NLP in the wake of the global pandemic—a time when IT budgets have been on a steady downturn—speaks volumes about just how important this technology is. To help healthcare and life science organizations take full advantage of all NLP has to offer, John Snow Labs has been hard at work making enhancements to its technology, improving accuracy, and knowledge-sharing amongst the NLP community to usher in the next wave of NLP adoption. Here are four ways the company has raised the bar for NLP this year:

1.) Putting Accuracy at the Forefront

At only four years old, John Snow Labs is still in its infancy, but its Spark NLP offering might lead you to believe otherwise. Half of all respondents from the aforementioned survey cited they used at least one of the top two libraries: Spark NLP and spaCy. More specifically, a third of all respondents stated they use Spark NLP, making it the most popular NLP library in the survey. This number only increases when we look at healthcare organizations, 54% of which stated they use Spark NLP. That won’t last long, though—the company experienced 9x growth in downloads since January, and the numbers keep climbing.

The hype around Spark NLP stems from a deep commitment to offering users the most accurate solution on the market. Accuracy is a huge pain point for NLP users, with more than 40% of users reporting accuracy as the most important criteria they use to evaluate NLP libraries. Accuracy refers to pre-trained models that get used in multi-stage NLP pipelines. These models let users input text to complete common tasks like named entity recognition, sentiment analysis, spell checking, document classification, and toxic content detection. Spark NLP models beat state-of-the-art academic accuracy on multiple public benchmarks, and more importantly, the software keeps improving as new research results get published and productized by the team.

2.) Constant Enhancements to the Technology

John Snow Labs released 26 new versions of Spark NLP in 2019 and another 26 this year, with the most recent being Spark NLP for Healthcare 2.7. The most significant feature in this release is Text to SQL, and other upgrades include more accurate entity resolution and clinical named entity recognizers, new PICO classifier for evidence-based medicine, new biomedical named entity recognizers, and new clinical and traffic accident NER models in German. These models are pre-trained with clinical BioBERT based embeddings, the most powerful contextual language model in the clinical domain today - making it an easy-to-use, best-in-class solution for clinical and biomedical NLP projects.

In addition to enhancements in the technology, John Snow Labs has also improved upon its multilingual offerings, making NLP available to more users worldwide. Historically, highly accurate NLP software was built largely for English and Chinese. Now, Spark NLP offers models in 46 languages, democratizing the technology for data scientists around the globe. Language support has been a big barrier to adoption, but recent advances such as language-agnostic sentence embeddings, zero-shot learning, and the public availability of multilingual embeddings, is making the technology more accessible.

3.) Addressing Mission-Critical Healthcare Applications

Adverse Drug Events (ADE) account for nearly 700,000 emergency department visits and 100,000 hospitalizations in the US alone. They are one of the most common types of inpatient errors, and put a big burden on the healthcare system. To address this, John Snow Labs recently announced updates in areas such as Named Entity Recognition (NER) and Classification, making it easier to achieve more timely and accurate results. The ADE NER model enables data scientists to extract ADE and drug entities from a given text, and its ADE classifiers are trained to automatically decide if a given sentence is, in fact, a description of an ADE.

The combination of NER and classifier and the availability of pre-trained clinical pipeline for ADE tasks in the Spark NLP library can save users from building such models and pipelines from scratch, and put them into production immediately. The pre-trained models that come with Spark NLP for Healthcare are the most accurate available today, improving on the previous SOTA results by Giorgi et. al. (2019) - while going beyond an academic research result to deliver a production-grade codebase.

4.) Knowledge Sharing with the Community

This year, John Snow Labs hosted the first-ever NLP Summit, a gathering of more than 6,500 practitioners to hear more than 50 sessions from industry thought leaders in the AI and NLP space. The four-day virtual event dedicated an entire day to healthcare use cases, and due to its popularity, has sparked the creation of a new Healthcare NLP Summit, which will kick off in April 2021. With speakers from Google, Kaiser Permanente, Roche, Intel, Merck, DocuSign, and more, we look forward to seeing what next year’s events will bring.

In addition to community-building and knowledge-sharing, John Snow Labs is committed to putting its AI and healthcare expertise into practice for good. To help in the fight against the Coronavirus, the company partnered with data. world, the cloud-native data catalog, to make 2,224 current, linked, and expert-curated healthcare datasets available to researchers and data scientists studying the disease for free. John Snow Labs is also providing free software licenses to researchers fighting COVID-19.

It’s been a year of tremendous innovation and growth for NLP, and industries beyond healthcare and life science are feeling its impact. With exciting advancements and capabilities that will make this technology more accessible to users, 2021 is poised to be another significant year for NLP.

More in News

ADA Compliance Web Accessibility Solutions: Enabling Inclusive Regulatory Readiness

Organizations are increasingly using digital platforms to connect with customers, employees, and stakeholders, making it essential for businesses to ensure that their websites are accessible. ADA compliance and web accessibility solutions allow organizations to create websites and digital applications that can be used by individuals with disabilities while meeting regulations and enhancing the overall user experience. These solutions enable businesses to reach a wider audience, improve their brand image, and offer more inclusive digital services across various industries. Web accessibility is about designing and maintaining content so that people with visual, auditory, motor, cognitive or other disabilities can access and use it. ADA compliance solutions help organizations find accessibility problems, fix them and make sure they keep their content accessible over time. As more and more sectors, like healthcare, retail, education, financial services, government and hospitality, move their services online, accessibility has become a part of digital strategy. Enhancing Digital Compliance Through Web Accessibility Solutions The main advantage of ADA-compliant web accessibility solutions is that they help find the things that get in the way of people using a website. Using machines to test accessibility helps organizations find the problems that make it hard for people to use their websites and web applications. The tools can find things like missing text for pictures, colors that are too hard to see, headings that are not done right, forms that do not work, and problems with using a keyboard to get around. " ADA compliance and web accessibility solutions allow organizations to create websites and digital applications that can be used by individuals with disabilities while meeting regulations and enhancing the overall user experience. " Accessibility specialists watch how real people use a website, and they check if the website works with tools that help people with disabilities. If a website has problems, some services can help fix them. These services make the website code better, make it easier to move, make videos and other media more accessible, and make the website look nicer. It makes the website easier to use and follows the rules for accessibility. It is very important to keep checking a website to make sure it is still accessible. Websites are always changing, so organizations need to keep looking for problems. Organizations need help making sure they are doing everything they can to make their websites accessible. ADA compliance web accessibility solutions help organizations do all these things so they can make their websites better and more accessible to everyone. ADA compliance web accessibility solutions are very important for making sure that everyone can use the internet. Demand Growing for ADA Compliance Web Accessibility Solutions Demand for web accessibility solutions continues to grow as organizations recognize the operational, legal, and commercial importance of accessible digital platforms. As more people interact with companies, these companies need to make sure their websites and digital services are easy for everyone to use. More people are becoming aware of accessibility standards, so companies are trying to make their digital services more inclusive from the start rather than waiting until someone complains. Modern websites have a lot of things like applications, videos, online shopping and personalized experiences, which makes it harder to manage accessibility without special tools. Companies are paying attention to how users feel when they are on their websites. Making websites accessible is not just good for people with disabilities; it makes the website easier to navigate and read for everyone. Big companies are changing the way they do things digitally. Companies are making sure their websites, mobile apps and other digital services are accessible as part of their plan. Websites are always being updated, which means companies need to keep checking if their websites are accessible. They need tools that can help them make sure their websites are accessible over time, even as they change. The need for accessibility solutions is growing because companies need to follow rules to make their users happy. They are always making new digital things. Digital-first business models and accessibility go hand in hand. Accessibility is important for the first business models. Advancing Web Accessibility: Innovative Solutions Ahead Advances in automation, AI and integrated digital governance will shape the future of ADA compliance web accessibility solutions. AI makes automated accessibility testing by finding problems that are not so easy to see, suggesting ways to fix them, and helping to check for compliance more quickly. Development platforms include accessibility features in the design and coding process. Accessibility can be considered from the beginning rather than trying to fix things after something has already been built. There are real-time monitoring technologies that can detect accessibility issues as soon as changes are made to a website or new content is added. Connecting these technologies to content management systems, experience platforms, and development pipelines will make it even easier to manage accessibility across an organization. Analytics are getting better, which means that organizations can see how well they are doing with accessibility, how much progress they are making, and if they are meeting compliance requirements across all of their digital properties, including ADA compliance web accessibility solutions. Although automation will continue improving efficiency, human expertise will remain essential for usability evaluation, accessibility strategy, policy development, and user-centered design decisions. ...Read more

Inventory Forecasting Must Account for Local Demand

Distributors can have plenty of inventory across their network and still struggle to meet demand at individual branches. Stock sitting in one warehouse does little good when customers need it elsewhere, while keeping every location stocked for its highest historical demand can tie up unnecessary capital. With thousands of product and location combinations to manage, purchasing teams cannot review every decision manually. Executives evaluating demand forecasting software need to know whether it can improve local product availability without driving up inventory costs across the business. Network-wide averages can easily hide costly gaps at individual locations. Past sales provide a useful starting point, but irregular buying patterns can make forecasting difficult. Slow-moving products may not generate enough transactions to produce a reliable forecast on their own. Seasonal spikes can also skew averages long after demand has returned to normal. Buyers should look at whether the software can draw insights from related products and distinguish recurring demand from unusual orders. External factors such as weather may also help improve predictions, but their value needs to be demonstrated for the products concerned rather than assumed across the entire catalog. Knowing what customers will buy is only half the equation. Buyers also need to know when to reorder. Changing supplier lead times can make it difficult to act on even an accurate demand forecast, while order frequency and minimum purchase quantities affect how much stock needs to be kept on hand. Software should account for actual purchase order history rather than rely solely on fixed lead times. Safety stock should also reflect how individual products sell at each location. Applying the same buffer everywhere can leave fast-selling products out of stock while slower-moving items pile up. “Lantern refreshes recommendations weekly and lets buyers compare suggested stocking levels with existing settings before approving or overriding them.” The way forecasting software works with existing ERP systems is another important consideration. If recommendations sit in a separate dashboard, buyers may still have to enter them manually into their purchasing systems. They should establish whether the software can read transactions from their existing ERP and feed approved stocking parameters or purchase orders back into it. Buyers also need to understand why the system recommends a particular change. When a business wins a new account or a branch receives an unusually large order, experienced staff should be able to override a forecast without having to work outside the system. Forecast accuracy matters, but it does not tell the whole story. Lower inventory means little if it leads to stockouts and unhappy customers. In some cases, holding more stock may be the right decision if those products sell consistently. Buyers should look at how the software affects product availability, inventory turns and the capital tied up in excess stock. Testing its recommendations against past transactions can also show where they differ from existing purchasing practices before a wider rollout. Buyers should also account for the work involved in preparing historical data and managing exceptions once the system is in place. Lantern builds a custom machine learning forecasting model for each distributor, using historical ERP data and business-specific purchasing practices. It combines demand forecasts with projected supplier lead times to recommend order timing and safety stock at the item-location level. Lantern refreshes recommendations weekly and lets buyers compare suggested stocking levels with existing settings before approving or overriding them. Approved purchase orders or stocking parameters can be written back into the ERP. Its models also examine relationships across products, supporting forecasts where individual sales histories are sparse. Distributors with large catalogs spread across multiple branches, especially those balancing excess inventory against missed sales, are the relevant buyers for this model. ...Read more

Identifying Enterprise Document Capture Solutions that Fit the Workflow

Enterprise imaging purchases rarely fail because a scanner cannot create a digital file. Trouble starts when document volumes and legacy applications collide with downstream workflows that were built around older processes. A platform may handle clean, standardized forms well, yet slow down when incoming files vary substantially or demand different routing rules. Executives, therefore, need to examine how completely a proposed environment can absorb the real document mix without forcing extensive manual preparation or creating new bottlenecks elsewhere. Capture architecture deserves close attention as the front end determines how much work remains after scanning. Useful systems should support classification, optical character recognition, data extraction and validation in ways that match actual document types and exception rates. Human review also matters. Automated recognition is valuable when confidence is high, but buyers should understand where validation screens enter the process and how questionable fields are routed before information reaches a database or content repository. Hardware choices belong in the same discussion. Desktop scanning and high-volume production work impose very different demands, and forcing both through a single equipment model can inflate costs or limit throughput. The proposed design should reflect actual preparation effort, peak intake volumes and the physical scanning environment rather than nominal device speed alone. Scanner flexibility also matters where several departments process different document sets at substantially different volumes. “EDAC Systems provides first-line support across the hardware and software it sells, reducing the need for customers to separate faults among multiple providers.” Legacy compatibility is equally consequential. Many enterprises still depend on older capture software and long-standing repositories while retaining scanners embedded in established processes. Replacing everything at once can increase implementation risk and budget pressure. A stronger proposal should account for migration and configuration from the outset, with integration planned around how existing records move into the new environment and how the changeover will be tested. Buyers should also examine whether the architecture can adjust when document volumes increase or automation requirements change without requiring a wholesale rebuild. That flexibility becomes more important when an organization expects its capture requirements to shift over several budget cycles. Security and records requirements can narrow the field quickly, particularly in government or regulated environments. Encryption and records-management controls need to be resolved against approved deployment conditions before installation, rather than treated as post-deployment configuration. Procurement teams should verify that both hardware and software satisfy applicable requirements and that the provider can work within on-premises or approved hosted environments when needed. Support after go-live is another practical separator. Document imaging environments combine scanners, capture software, connectors and repositories, which can leave customers coordinating multiple suppliers when something fails. Contract review should establish who owns first-line troubleshooting and whether hardware and software issues are handled through one support path. Availability of on-site assistance also matters when remote fixes are insufficient. EDAC Systems designs document imaging and data capture environments around each customer’s document types, workflow, existing technology and budget constraints. Its approach can combine Ricoh or OPEX scanning hardware with capture software and Doxis-based document or records management, depending on the application. It also handles migration, configuration, testing and training during implementation. It provides first-line support across the hardware and software it sells, reducing the need for customers to separate faults among multiple providers. For enterprises with mixed legacy environments, compliance requirements or varied document volumes, the breadth of design and support makes EDAC Systems a practical vendor to consider. ...Read more

What Microsoft 365 Migration Providers Must Get Right

Moving from Google Workspace or legacy Exchange to Microsoft 365 involves more than transferring mailboxes. File structures may not translate cleanly, account permissions can change and an overlooked dependency can interrupt access after cutover. Executives comparing migration providers must establish how thoroughly each one investigates the existing environment before committing to a transfer schedule. A technically completed migration offers little reassurance when employees cannot retrieve the information they previously used. Pre-migration assessment establishes the boundaries of the work. User inventories should account for inactive accounts and shared mailboxes, while file assessments must identify naming restrictions, excessive path lengths and permission structures that Microsoft 365 handles differently. Tenant-to-tenant transfers introduce additional complications around identity mapping and existing collaboration spaces. Providers should document these differences before migration begins rather than discovering them during execution. Compliance requirements can alter the migration design considerably. Retention policies and access restrictions may determine where information resides after transfer or which users can retrieve it. An assessment that concentrates exclusively on data volume risks overlooking controls that governed the original environment. Procurement teams benefit from examining whether the provider produces a documented migration scope connecting technical dependencies to the organization's internal requirements. “RyanTech incorporates Microsoft Defender and Purview into tenant planning, allowing security requirements to shape the destination environment before users begin working in it.” Cutover scheduling exposes a different set of risks. DNS propagation may take longer than anticipated, while network interruptions can delay synchronization during a planned transition. Promises of zero downtime leave little room for these external dependencies. A credible migration approach includes contingency procedures, defined escalation responsibilities and a cutover window that reflects the organization's working patterns. The provider should explain what happens when an expected transition does not occur on schedule. Business continuity also depends on what employees encounter after the switch. Missing shared files or unfamiliar permissions can generate support requests even when mailbox transfers succeed. Validation should establish that users can access the resources required for their work, not merely confirm that data reached its destination. Clear responsibility for resolving post-cutover issues reduces the burden on internal IT teams. Security configuration cannot be deferred until employees have settled into Microsoft 365. A newly provisioned tenant may introduce unfamiliar exposure through identity settings or insufficiently configured data protection policies. Microsoft Defender, Intune and Purview provide controls that can be incorporated into the destination design. Providers differ in whether they configure these protections during migration planning or treat them as later projects. Licensing decisions also influence which controls are available and whether organizations purchase functionality they will actually use. Support arrangements become particularly relevant once the migration specialists have completed their assignment. Changes to compliance requirements or user access may expose decisions made during the original transfer. Continuity between migration and support personnel helps retain that context. RyanTech conducts Microsoft 365 migrations through an initial environment audit that establishes customer requirements and informs a documented transfer plan. Its migration team prepares for DNS delays and other cutover interruptions, scheduling transitions around business requirements rather than promising uninterrupted service. RyanTech incorporates Microsoft Defender and Purview into tenant planning, allowing security requirements to shape the destination environment before users begin working in it. Its project and support teams subsequently address configuration changes, user adoption and evolving compliance requirements. Experience spanning Google Workspace, on-premises Exchange and tenant-to-tenant migrations informs its handling of differing source environments. Organizations consolidating disparate systems into Microsoft 365 while requiring security configuration and continuing technical support are particularly suited to this approach. ...Read more