Question Answering from Healthcare Fora

Abstract

Assessing the quality of life of cancer patients is an important aspect of patient-focused drug development and real-world evidence generation. Specialized quality of life questionnaires exist for this purpose, and different types of cancer, such as breast cancer or lung cancer, can be assessed. However, conducting these surveys is a time-consuming process for both patients and clinical staff. At the same time, many patients discuss their experiences with and symptoms of their specific diseases in online healthcare fora. These forum posts may contain information that could be used to answer quality of life questions. Our objective is to determine whether forum posts can be used to answer quality of life questionnaires and, if so, whether this process can be automated successfully.