Evaluating Medical Entity Recognition in Healthcare: An In-Depth Analysis of Recognition Models (Preprint)

Named entity recognition (NER) models are essential for extracting structured information from unstructured medical texts by identifying entities such as diseases, treatments, and conditions, enhancing clinical decision-making and research. Innovations in machine learning, particularly those involving Bidirectional Encoder Representations From Transformers (BERT)-based deep learning and large language models, have significantly advanced NER capabilities. However, their performance varies across medical datasets due to the complexity and diversity of medical terminology. Previous studies have often focused on overall performance, neglecting specific challenges in medical contexts and the impact of macrofactors like lexical composition on prediction accuracy. These gaps hinder the development of optimized NER models for medical applications.