Study shows artificial intelligence can detect language problems tied to liver failure

Natural language processing, the technology that lets computers read, decipher, understand and make sense of human language, is the driving force behind internet search engines, email filters, digital assistants such as Amazon's Alexa and Apple's Siri, and language-to-language translation apps. Now, Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers say they have given this technology a new job as a clinical detective, diagnosing the early and subtle signs of language-associated cognitive impairments in patients with failing livers. They also report finding evidence that cognitive functioning is likely to be restored following a liver transplant. In a new paper in the journal npj Digital Medicine (formerly Nature Digital Medicine), the researchers describe how they used natural language processing, or NLP, to evaluate electronic message samples from patients with end-stage liver disease (ESLD), also known as chronic liver failure. ESLD has been associated with transient cognitive abnormalities such as diminished attention span, loss of memory and reduced psychomotor speed, an individual's ability to detect and respond to the world around them.