Definition
Text mining is the process of extracting meaning from unstructured text data. Examples of this type of data are documents, websites, and social media, as well as semi-structured text formats like JSON, XML, and HTML. Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques, including topic modeling and sentiment analysis, and Machine Learning (ML) techniques can be employed to explore text and better understand hard to see relationships in the data.
Important information on patients is contained within unstructured text data such such as physician's notes and clinical histories. NLP can be used to parse this data and text mining can then help find patterns in a patient's records that can provide a care team with critical information for improving treatment outcomes.
Similar Terms
NLP ToolKit is a popular suite of Python tools used for text analysis: Jablonski, J. (n.d.). "Natural Language Processing With Python's NLTK Package". Realpython.com https://realpython.com/nltk-nlp-python/
Further Resources
Provides overview of text mining as well as some common text mining tasks: IBM (n.d.). "What is Text Mining". IBM.com https://www.ibm.com/topics/text-mining