Efficiency of natural language processing as a tool for analysing quality of life in patients with chronic diseases. A systematic review

The application of Artificial Intelligence is progressively spreading in the field of health. Considering this scenario, Natural Language Processing (NLP) is having more acceptance within various disciplines, as mental health, that use large amounts of text-like information, to improve data parsing efficiency. The objective of this systematic review is to synthesize the scientific evidence on the application of NLP techniques as a quality of life analysis tool in patients with chronic pathologies. The articles that were taken into consideration and address the main objective of this study were published between 2011 and 2021. Within the scientific studies obtained from the research question, nine met all the defined inclusion criteria. These studies demonstrated the effectiveness of NLP as an instrument to analize and evaluate the quality of life in cancer patients, among other patients with chronic diseases. An acceptable precision (>70%) can be observed using NLP technologies for the labelling of symptoms, detection of emotions and recognition of their intensity, as well as the quantification of pain in medical records and in self-reports. Therefore, a superior performance of NLP to process and analize texts is observed compared to traditional methodologies. In conclusion, the interest of including methodologies based on NLP to assess the quality of life of chronic patients is growing, motivated by their effectiveness and efficiency.