Alleviating the medical strain: a triage method via cross-domain text classification

It is a universal phenomenon for patients who do not know which clinical department to register in large general hospitals. Although triage nurses can help patients, due to the larger number of patients, they have to stand in a queue for minutes to consult. Recently, there have already been some eff...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Xiao Xiao, Shuqin Wang, Feng Jiang, Tingyue Qi, Wei Wang
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Frontiers Media S.A. 2024-12-01
Series:Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fncom.2024.1468519/full
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1850251008480903168
author Xiao Xiao
Shuqin Wang
Feng Jiang
Tingyue Qi
Wei Wang
author_facet Xiao Xiao
Shuqin Wang
Feng Jiang
Tingyue Qi
Wei Wang
author_sort Xiao Xiao
collection DOAJ
description It is a universal phenomenon for patients who do not know which clinical department to register in large general hospitals. Although triage nurses can help patients, due to the larger number of patients, they have to stand in a queue for minutes to consult. Recently, there have already been some efforts to devote deep-learning techniques or pre-trained language models (PLMs) to triage recommendations. However, these methods may suffer two main limitations: (1) These methods typically require a certain amount of labeled or unlabeled data for model training, which are not always accessible and costly to acquire. (2) These methods have not taken into account the distortion of semantic feature structure and the loss of category discriminability in the model training. To overcome these limitations, in this study, we propose a cross-domain text classification method based on prompt-tuning, which can classify patients' questions or texts about their symptoms into several given categories to give suggestions on which kind of consulting room patients could choose. Specifically, first, different prompt templates are manually crafted based on various data contents, embedding source domain information into the prompt templates to generate another text with similar semantic feature structures for performing classification tasks. Then, five different strategies are employed to expand the label word space for modifying prompts, and the integration of these strategies is used as the final verbalizer. The extensive experiments on Chinese Triage datasets demonstrate that our method achieved state-of-the-art performance.
format Article
id doaj-art-0e8618ae194e4917b1cddca21ee60faa
institution OA Journals
issn 1662-5188
language English
publishDate 2024-12-01
publisher Frontiers Media S.A.
record_format Article
series Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience
spelling doaj-art-0e8618ae194e4917b1cddca21ee60faa2025-08-20T01:58:00ZengFrontiers Media S.A.Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience1662-51882024-12-011810.3389/fncom.2024.14685191468519Alleviating the medical strain: a triage method via cross-domain text classificationXiao Xiao0Shuqin Wang1Feng Jiang2Tingyue Qi3Wei Wang4Department of Ultrasound, The Affiliated Hospital of Yangzhou University, Yangzhou University, Yangzhou, Jiangsu, ChinaDepartment of Information Engineering, Yangzhou University, Yangzhou, Jiangsu, ChinaDepartment of Ultrasound, The First Affiliated Hospital of Wannan Medical College, Wuhu, Anhui, ChinaDepartment of Ultrasound, The Affiliated Hospital of Yangzhou University, Yangzhou University, Yangzhou, Jiangsu, ChinaDepartment of Radiology, The Affiliated Hospital of Yangzhou University, Yangzhou University, Yangzhou, Jiangsu, ChinaIt is a universal phenomenon for patients who do not know which clinical department to register in large general hospitals. Although triage nurses can help patients, due to the larger number of patients, they have to stand in a queue for minutes to consult. Recently, there have already been some efforts to devote deep-learning techniques or pre-trained language models (PLMs) to triage recommendations. However, these methods may suffer two main limitations: (1) These methods typically require a certain amount of labeled or unlabeled data for model training, which are not always accessible and costly to acquire. (2) These methods have not taken into account the distortion of semantic feature structure and the loss of category discriminability in the model training. To overcome these limitations, in this study, we propose a cross-domain text classification method based on prompt-tuning, which can classify patients' questions or texts about their symptoms into several given categories to give suggestions on which kind of consulting room patients could choose. Specifically, first, different prompt templates are manually crafted based on various data contents, embedding source domain information into the prompt templates to generate another text with similar semantic feature structures for performing classification tasks. Then, five different strategies are employed to expand the label word space for modifying prompts, and the integration of these strategies is used as the final verbalizer. The extensive experiments on Chinese Triage datasets demonstrate that our method achieved state-of-the-art performance.https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fncom.2024.1468519/fullmedical triagecross-domain text classificationprompt-tuningfew-shotdomain adaptation
spellingShingle Xiao Xiao
Shuqin Wang
Feng Jiang
Tingyue Qi
Wei Wang
Alleviating the medical strain: a triage method via cross-domain text classification
Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience
medical triage
cross-domain text classification
prompt-tuning
few-shot
domain adaptation
title Alleviating the medical strain: a triage method via cross-domain text classification
title_full Alleviating the medical strain: a triage method via cross-domain text classification
title_fullStr Alleviating the medical strain: a triage method via cross-domain text classification
title_full_unstemmed Alleviating the medical strain: a triage method via cross-domain text classification
title_short Alleviating the medical strain: a triage method via cross-domain text classification
title_sort alleviating the medical strain a triage method via cross domain text classification
topic medical triage
cross-domain text classification
prompt-tuning
few-shot
domain adaptation
url https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fncom.2024.1468519/full
work_keys_str_mv AT xiaoxiao alleviatingthemedicalstrainatriagemethodviacrossdomaintextclassification
AT shuqinwang alleviatingthemedicalstrainatriagemethodviacrossdomaintextclassification
AT fengjiang alleviatingthemedicalstrainatriagemethodviacrossdomaintextclassification
AT tingyueqi alleviatingthemedicalstrainatriagemethodviacrossdomaintextclassification
AT weiwang alleviatingthemedicalstrainatriagemethodviacrossdomaintextclassification