Incorporating Natural Language Processing within a Large National Network: Current State of ENACT NLP Working Group

2025 Informatics Summit On Demand

Presentation Time: 10:30 AM - 12:00 PM

Abstract Keywords: Clinical and Research Data Collection, Curation, Preservation, or Sharing, Data/System Integration, Standardization and Interoperability, Natural Language Processing, Ontologies, Cohort Discovery
Primary Track: Clinical Research Informatics
Programmatic Theme: Emerging Best Practices for Clinical Research Informatics Operations

The Evolve to Next-Gen Accrual to Clinical Trials (ENACT) (previously known as ACT) network was established in 2015 with funding from the NCATS. ENACT is a large federated network of EHR data repositories at 57 CTSA hubs that serves as an information superhighway for querying EHR data on >142M patients and providing data access to all CTSA hub investigators. As a substantial portion of vital information resides within clinical texts, the utilization of Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques is critical to fully leverage EHRs for clinical and translational research. However, to date, no large EHR network has implemented NLP pipelines and systems to fully utilize the text data. The ENACT NLP working group was established with the primary goal of ensuring that NLP pipeline will be deployed network wise and NLP-derived concepts become accessible and searchable across the entire ENACT network. The working group consisted of ten participating ENACT sites, which were then split into several focus groups to pilot a few specific projects in different disease conditions. During this panel, we will introduce the current state of the ENACT NLP Working Group and share practical strategies we made and learned during the process. We will share the updates and lessons learned from three pilot projects, including housing status identification, delirium phenotype identification, and opioid disorder identification, with the AMIA community. This work will also benefit other large EHR networks, such as the PCORnet and OHDSI network, which are considering deploying NLP pipelines to unlock the potential of clinical texts.
Moderator:
Yanshan Wang, PhD
University of Pittsburgh

Speaker(s):
Shyam Visweswaran, MD PhD
University of Pittsburgh

Sunyang Fu, PhD, MHI
UTHealth

Paul Heider, PhD
Medical University of South Carolina

Daniel Harris
University of Kentucky

Michele Morris, BA
University of Pittsburgh

Author(s):
Yanshan Wang, PhD - University of Pittsburgh; Sunyang Fu, PhD, MHI - UTHealth; Paul Heider, PhD - Medical University of South Carolina; Daniel Harris - University of Kentucky; Michele Morris, BA - University of Pittsburgh; Shyam Visweswaran, MD PhD - University of Pittsburgh;