Development of Computational Methods for Evaluating Doctor-Patient Communication [Methods Study], United States, 2016-2021

The way doctors communicate with patients during office visits can affect the quality of care. Studying conversations between doctors and patients can help doctors improve their communication skills.
To study conversations, researchers rely on written records, or transcripts, of office visits. They read the transcripts and give each conversation topic a label. For example, topics may include smoking or pain. But labeling topics in this way may take a lot of time.
In this project, the research team created and tested a new method to make this work easier using natural language processing, or NLP. With NLP, computer programs interpret written language. NLP methods use a process called machine learning, where computer programs use data to learn how to perform different tasks with little or no human input.