Text summarization in the biomedical domain

Display Omitted First systematic review of text summarization in the biomedical domain.The study found a predominance of methods producing extractive summaries.Multiple documents were used as the source for summarization.Natural language processing, and hybrid techniques were prominently used.Research is needed on the application of text summarization in real settings. ObjectiveThe amount of information for clinicians and clinical researchers is growing exponentially. Text summarization reduces information as an attempt to enable users to find and understand relevant source texts more quickly and effortlessly. In recent years, substantial research has been conducted to develop and evaluate various summarization techniques in the biomedical domain. The goal of this study was to systematically review recent published research on summarization of textual documents in the biomedical domain. Materials and methodsMEDLINE (2000 to October 2013), IEEE Digital Library, and the ACM digital library were searched. Investigators independently screened and abstracted studies that examined text summarization techniques in the biomedical domain. Information is derived from selected articles on five dimensions: input, purpose, output, method and evaluation. ResultsOf 10,786 studies retrieved, 34 (0.3%) met the inclusion criteria. Natural language processing (17; 50%) and a hybrid technique comprising of statistical, Natural language processing and machine learning (15; 44%) were the most common summarization approaches. Most studies (28; 82%) conducted an intrinsic evaluation. DiscussionThis is the first systematic review of text summarization in the biomedical domain. The study identified research gaps and provides recommendations for guiding future research on biomedical text summarization. ConclusionRecent research has focused on a hybrid technique comprising statistical, language processing and machine learning techniques. Further research is needed on the application and evaluation of text summarization in real research or patient care settings.