Identification of Related Electronic Medical Record Documents in a Question and Answer System

A computer program product comprising a computer readable storage medium having a computer readable program stored therein, wherein the computer readable program, when executed on a computing device, causes the computing device to implement a contextually relevant patient information extractor which operates to:

• receive, by the contextually relevant patient information extractor, an input question directed to medical information about a patient;
• analyze, by the contextually relevant patient information extractor, a patient's electronic medical records (EMRs) to identify an initial entry in the patient's EMRs corresponding to a candidate answer to the input question;
• analyze, by the contextually relevant patient information extractor, a context of the patient's EMRs based on the initial entry to identify entries in the patient's EMR that are contextually connected to the initial entry;
• perform, by the contextually relevant patient information extractor, question answering analysis on the initial entry and entries that are contextually connected to the initial entry to identify one or more candidate answers to the input question;
• and
• output, by the contextually relevant patient information extractor, a final answer to the input question based on the question answering analysis.

An apparatus comprising:

• a processor;
• and
• a memory coupled to the processor, wherein the memory comprises instructions which, when executed by the processor, cause the processor to implement a contextually relevant patient information extractor which operates to:
• receive, by the contextually relevant patient information extractor, an input question directed to medical information about a patient;
• analyze, by the contextually relevant patient information extractor, a patient's electronic medical records (EMRs) to identify an initial entry in the patient's EMRs corresponding to a candidate answer to the input question;
• analyze, by the contextually relevant patient information extractor, a context of the patient's EMRs based on the initial entry to identify entries in the patient's EMR that are contextually connected to the initial entry;
• perform, by the contextually relevant patient information extractor, question answering analysis on the initial entry and entries that are contextually connected to the initial entry to identify one or more candidate answers to the input question;
• and
• output, by the contextually relevant patient information extractor, a final answer to the input question based on the question answering analysis.