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- Title
A frequency-based technique to improve the spelling suggestion rank in medical queries.
- Authors
Crowell J; Zeng Q; Ngo L; Lacroix E; Crowell, Jonathan; Zeng, Qing; Ngo, Long; Lacroix, Eve-Marie
- Abstract
<bold>Objective: </bold>There is an abundance of health-related information online, and millions of consumers search for such information. Spell checking is of crucial importance in returning pertinent results, so the authors propose a technique for increasing the effectiveness of spell-checking tools used for health-related information retrieval.<bold>Design: </bold>A sample of incorrectly spelled medical terms was submitted to two different spell-checking tools, and the resulting suggestions, derived under two different dictionary configurations, were re-sorted according to how frequently each term appeared in log data from a medical search engine.<bold>Measurements: </bold>Univariable analysis was carried out to assess the effect of each factor (spell-checking tool, dictionary type, re-sort, or no re-sort) on the probability of success. The factors that were statistically significant in the univariable analysis were then used in multivariable analysis to evaluate the independent effect of each of the factors.<bold>Results: </bold>The re-sorted suggestions proved to be significantly more accurate than the original list returned by the spell-checking tool. The odds of finding the correct suggestion in the number one rank were increased by 63% after re-sorting using the authors' method. This effect was independent of both the dictionary and the spell-checking tools that were used.<bold>Conclusion: </bold>Using knowledge about the frequency of a given word's occurrence in the medical domain can significantly improve spelling correction for medical queries.
- Publication
Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 2004, Vol 11, Issue 3, p179
- ISSN
1067-5027
- Publication type
journal article
- DOI
10.1197/jamia.m1474