Application of Natural Language Processing to Learn Insights on the Clinician's Lived Experience of Electronic Health Records

We interviewed six clinicians to learn about their lived experience using electronic health records (EHR, Allscripts users) using a semi-structured interview guide in an academic medical center in New York City from October to November 2016. Each participant interview lasted approximately one to two hours. We applied a clustering algorithm to the interview transcript to detect topics, applying natural language processing (NLP). We visualized eight themes using network diagrams (Louvain modularity 0.70). Novel findings include the need for a concise and organized display and data entry page, the user controlling functions for orders, medications, radiology reports, and missing signals of indentation or filtering functions in the order page and lab results. Application of topic modeling to qualitative interview data provides far-reaching research insights into the clinicians' lived experience of EHR and future optimal EHR design to address human-computer interaction issues in an acute care setting.