Machine learning can help us understand conversations about death

IMAGE: Robert Gramling is the Holly and Bob Miller Chair in Palliative Medicine at the University of Vermont Larner College of Medicine. In a new paper, Gramling and his colleagues show... view more Some of the most important, and difficult, conversations in healthcare are the ones that happen amid serious and life-threatening illnesses. Discussions of the treatment options and prognoses in these settings are a delicate balance for doctors and nurses who are dealing with people at their most vulnerable point and may not fully understand what the future holds. Now researchers at the University of Vermont's Vermont Conversation Lab have used machine learning and natural language processing to better understand what those conversations look like, which could eventually help healthcare providers improve their end-of-life communication. "We want to understand this complex thing called a conversation," says Robert Gramling, director of the lab in UVM's Larner College of Medicine who led the study, published December 9 in the journal Patient Education and Counselling.