Friday, September 13, 2019

Startup Uses AI to Automate Medical Coding

Doctors’ handwriting is notoriously difficult to read. Even more cryptic is medical coding — the process of turning a clinician’s notes into a set of alphanumeric codes representing every diagnosis and procedure. Although this system is used in over 100 countries worldwide, accurate coding is of particular significance in the U.S., where medical codes form the basis for the bills doctors, clinics and hospitals issue to insurance providers and patients. More than 150,000 codes are used in the U.S.’s adaptation of the International Classification of Diseases, a cataloging standard developed by the World Health Organization.