Apixio Selected for Natural Language Processing Working Group by National Committee for Quality Assurance

By AIT News Desk On Feb 27, 2020

AI Healthcare Analytics Company Among Exclusive Group Selected to Explore Use of Advanced Technology for Care Quality Measurement

Apixio Inc., the AI healthcare analytics company, announced that it was among three companies selected by the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA) to participate in the organization’s Natural Language Processing (NLP) Working Group. The group convenes this spring to help NCQA explore use of NLP in quality measurement and reporting. NLP, a field of artificial intelligence, has been used with some success in healthcare to derive insights about patient care from physician and hospital clinical notes.

The purpose of the working group is to help NCQA determine how to best evaluate NLP technologies with respect to its ability to facilitate better quality measurement while maintaining high standards of fairness, thoroughness, and rigor. Apixio was selected last fall to participate in this exclusive group, which includes UPMC Enterprises and Wave Health Technologies, given its expertise using NLP to determine patient care facts from encounter notes for use in quality measure reporting.

“Natural Language Processing has the potential to reduce the burden of quality reporting while opening the door to more meaningful measures,” said NCQA CIO Rick Moore. “The companies chosen for our working group have considerable experience in the practical application of NLP. We look forward to learning from our participants in the coming months.”

NCQA publishes widely used performance improvement data such as Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set (HEDIS) reporting. The organization will use findings from working group members to develop a validation standard for NLP derived data in conjunction with an independent advisory panel of NLP experts. NCQA will then validate the integrity of NLP solutions that will help healthcare organizations determine which technologies are most effective for use within their measurement frameworks.

“NCQA’s ability to fulfill its mission depends on access to reliable measurement data. Apixio is proud to be working with the industry leader in quality reporting to explore the massive potential of artificial intelligence techniques like NLP,” said Apixio CEO Darren Schulte, M.D. “We’ve already seen how NLP and machine learning can be used to identify relevant clinical evidence in patient charts. We are excited about the use of NLP to transform quality measurement to focus on achieving outcomes rather than following specific processes.”

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